Radiation Reality Check
🌼 Date: Saturday, April 11, 2026
⚡ Energy: Slowing Down
❤️ Status: Observing and Adjusting
🫤 Outlook: Learning as I Go
One of the nice things about radiation is that it only happens Monday through Friday, so today was a treatment-free day.
Which gave me a chance to notice something.
Today I didn’t have a headache.
And that made me realize that I actually did have headaches the last two days after radiation.
Interesting.
So I think starting Monday I’m going to try taking some Tylenol before leaving for my appointment and see if that makes a difference.
Then this morning when I went to put my lotion on, I noticed something else.
My skin is already a little tender, and last night I had a couple spots that were itchy.
Excuse me?
I have way too much of this journey left for my skin to already be getting cranky. It needs to calm itself down immediately.
So naturally, like any modern problem solver, I turned to the most trusted medical advisor known to mankind:
Amazon.
I ordered a different lotion that still contains calendula, but this one comes from the same company that makes the oncology cream that helped me so much during my snow globe phase.
So we’ll see how their radiology cream performs.
It should arrive tomorrow, and I will of course provide a completely unbiased product review.
Because if this journey has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes the real MVPs are the random products that help you survive treatment.
I’ve also started keeping a running list in the Notes app on my phone of things I want to ask my oncologist.
Part of the radiation protocol is that I meet with him every Wednesday after treatment so he can check in, inspect my skin, and make sure everything still looks okay to continue.
My current list includes:
• The headaches
• The itchiness and tenderness
• The fatigue that seems to already be showing up
I honestly expected radiation fatigue to behave more like chemo did, where it builds up gradually over time.
But apparently my body had other plans.
I guess that’s what I get for thinking I knew what to expect.
I also added one more question to my list:
Should I be taking something to prevent bone loss from radiation now that I’m officially a senior citizen?
😁
Because if we’re going to do this whole radiation adventure, we might as well try to keep the rest of the skeleton in good working order.
💗 Tina –
One Badass Day at a Time
