Hi bluewater,

Welcome to Cancer Chat. I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing these difficulties and I can understand it causing some concern. Your doctor will be the best person to speak to in order to check this, and hopefully also to give you some peace of mind.

However if there are others here with similar experience to share, then hopefully they'll be along soon - my reply here will boost your post so a few more people should see it.

Wishing you all the best,

Ben
Cancer Chat Moderator

Hi,

I had a mastectomy then node removal almost three years ago. The mastectomy was a breeze compared with the node stripping and I have to say, I still get the tightness and have lumpy bits, but not as bad as they used to be. The physiotherapist got rid of the cording, and I had to go to the lymphoedema clinic for a while, but fortunately it was in my mastectomy site, not my underarm and that too went eventually.  I find regular massaging the area with Aveeno cream really helpful but wearing a bra and prosthesis is very uncomfortable and I only do so if I am going out. I find wearing a close fitting vest like a body shaper  to be more comfortable with my remaining boob squashed flat and just a snug  fit on the painful side. 

It's early days,yet, and time is the only prescription I think, Instead of the constant burning I just have the tightness and the odd twinge.

Honestly, I'm not a worrier and  I don't even think about recurrence, and my tumour was grade 2,  I think this tightness and pain would be there if the surgery had been in that place for any reason, not just cancer, and is one of the annoyances that we're left with that will improve over time. Mine is nowhere near as painful as it used to be.   I know I can only speak for myself, and everyone's different but I hope yours follows a similar pattern to mine or is even better.

xx