Abdominal pain weeks after chemo and radiation

newreality · Regular Joined: 03 Feb 2009 Posts: 12

Hello,

Has anyone experienced abdominal pain weeks after completing chemo and/or radiation?

Dad had 6 cycles of Carbo./Taxol and radiation then a break, then 2 cycles of "full strength" Carbo./Taxol with no radiation. Last radiation session was in March. Last chemo was April 24.

He now has pretty bad abdominal pain - both internal - as in upset stomach/burning/pain when eating, and external - as in the muscles/tissue around the abdominal area. He has trouble bending over or making other similar movements. He is stage 3b NSCLC and recently had PET showing 30% improvement, which the docs thought was "remarkable"...

So, is it normal to have this pain so long after completion of chemo/radio. - it didn't start til about 2 weeks ago.

If normal, how long can we expect this to persist? It makes eating very hard and the "muscle" pain complicates things even more. Dad describes this pain as if you had worked out super hard the day before and your muscles ache with movement.

Has anyone expericenced this? When we met with the team of docs for PET results they attributed it to treatment. Are they right??

Thanks.

mamaof4 · Regular Joined: 10 May 2009 Posts: 14

My husband had 6 weeks of chemo and radiation for stage 3 rectal cancer. Radiation took 9 weeks just for the outside burning to heal, so you can figure it will take longer for the inside to heal. As for the chemo, he still has the lingering effects. All the doctors ever tell us is that it just takes time to recover. I wish they would give us a time frame because I am tired of wondering if it is normal or not.

smhistorian · New User Joined: 02 Jun 2009 Posts: 2 Location: Tennessee

I had my last chemo treatment the last week of January of this year, and my last radiation treatment February 18th of this year. This was for stage 2 anal cancer (and I also have leukemia). My experience is that, as of right now, June 22, 2009, I have still got pain in my lower abdomen; lower back; and legs down to my knees. When I lay on my side at night in bed it feels like my hip bones are going to poke out through the skin. Myu buttock area down to my knees feels like I have accidently backed into an electric fence with all of the tingling associated with that. But, it is SLOWLY getting better. The tingling isn't quite as strong as it was. I still have trouble bending up and down for anything, and have trouble walking the first few steps if I sit too long. Getting out of chairs is hard, and sitting on a low commode is painful lowering myself down to it. It makes it harder because I also have a lower back problem with degenatrive disks, so don't know exactly how much of the problem of lowering myself and getting back up to the back problem, and how much to attribute to the radiation. But, some things I can still attribute to the radiation, so it must take a long time to fully recover from it.

Karieileen · New User Joined: 17 Jun 2009 Posts: 9

I had severe stomach pain any time I ate for more that a year after chemo and radiation. I understand what your dad is suffering. Antacids sometimes helped, but what really worked for me was acupuncture. I know not everyone believes that works, but anything is worth a try. It takes chemo and radiation a long time to fully make it out of your system, so they best thing you can do is explore all of your pain relief options.
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Kari Eileen -- Stage IV Hodgkin's Lymphoma survivor and representative of maddoxoncology.com

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