Peggy's Real Self

He and His Staff Have Been So Great to Me. I Really Appreciate It. - Spartanburg, SC

You are very welcome. I hope it helps her. It certainly helped me.

It is a topical cream for radiation dermatitis symptom relief. It is called Xclair Cream. It is put out by ALIGN Pharmaceuticals. The web site it www.alignpharma.com. It is prescription only, but you can get her doctor to give her one. Her doctor might have samples. My doctor gave me a lot of different kinds of sample creams. This one was the best for me.

I don't think I am exceptional, just stubborn. I think it's my stubborness that makes me go on when the going gets rough. I don't know where she is taking her treatment at but when she does radiation there is a new cream out that only doctors can get (when I used it I could only get samples because was not even on the market) that really is remarkable. It has milk or something like that in it. I did not have any scarring or puckering. I got several kinds of samples but this one was the best. My skin turned red, but my radiation doctor was amazed at how soft it made my skin. The instructions say to put it on immediately, but I had to go to work after treatment so my skin had time to cool before I put it on. It really was soothing, especially the last week of treatment. I will try to remember and get the name for you if she wants to try it when she starts her treatment.

I have three sisters and we all are close, but it was my baby sister who did this for me. I call her my little watch dog because she would not let me do anything strenous. Sometimes when I was getting close to healing I would have to tell her I need to do this myself to get my strength back. She would laugh and say 'You are so right, I just need to do something else while you do this, don't I!' I would say, 'Yep!'

You are so welcome for the sharing. I hope it helps in some small way. I enjoy sharing with you.

Yes, I was scared a little, but these drugs are just waiting in FDA approval and they are just running trials to backup their data. Does your mom have breast cancer or someother kind of cancer. They have so many different treatment options now. I did chemo first, then surgery, then radiation. Depending on each individual situation they put together a treatment plan that suits that patients needs. It is good that your mom is strong and independent. This will help her in the long run. I know it is hard to accept help but is best to let her determine how much help she needs in order to retain her sense of self. Here is the kind of help I had. My sister came and cleaned my house for me twice a week for a year and a half. This helped me to conserve my energy for work and treatments. Maybe your mom could accept help like that. Tell her I said it was a big thing for my sister to do and it helped her knowing that she was helping me. This past July I took her to Montana (on plane tickets that I won at work) because she had always wanted to go there. We had a ball. That was my thank you.

My energy level did get a little low but I work with a great group of people who helped take some of the load off me. Like I posted I did not want this to impact my daily life anymore than I could help. I went through the clinical trials with some experimental drugs. One of them really shrunk my tumor, but the other one didn't seem to help (this was the one that shrunk the blood vessels) and they ended up only giving me 5 treatments instead of 8 because I had an infected toe which threw my schedule off. I was glad I went through the trials because the clinical trials nurse was the big inspiration for me to do the reconstruction. She is so great!!! I know your mom is going through a lot but just be patient with her, it takes a lot of will power to do chemo. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully in a few months I will see the end of my tunnel. Tell your mom to do as much as she can with the amount of strength she has and don't worry about the rest, it will take care of itself.