My husband is starting radiotherapy this week after having hormone therapy. Can you give me any advice on when side effects of the radiotherapy may start ie. straight away or sometime into the treatment.
Hello. Just finished my radiotherapy last week and have quite a few side effects.The hot flushes continue from the hormone therapy. Unfortunately and as you will have read, the effects start to kick in as the radiotherapy progresses. Having said that, there seems to be a lot of men who suffer very few, if any side effects. I suffer from fatigue feeling very tired and have mostly an afternoon nap and early nights. Bowel motions seem more frequent and loose. Slight burning when seeing and sometime slow performance. One tip I will freely advertise as no one told me, was that prior to radiotherapy, you have drink three glasses of water. By the time you have the treatment, I was desperate to go to the toilet. Where I was treated, there were no toilets in the changing room and by the time I was treated and changed back into my clothes, it was too late. From that time I asked for a urine bottle to take into the changing room incase I needed it in the future. The hospital were lovely about it. Good luck, it will pass quickly and you will meet some lovely people.
Everyone is different when it comes to treatment and side effects but generally side effects usually begin within a week or 2 of starting radiotherapy. Side effects can accumulate as the treatment goes on and often peak a couple of weeks after treatment finishes before starting to ease off.
The team looking after your husband will monitor him and any side effects he may experience to help him to manage these as he goes through his treatment.
I hope this helps.
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