tip or tricks on getting through radiation?

Really sorry to hear you had such a rough time with chemo.  

The good news is not everyone has a bad experience with radiation skin wise, so I'm really hoping you all into that bucket despite your dermatitis.  The oncologists said it's impossible to judge how you might react, so it's not really related to skin type (I have Irish skin, but that wasn't a problem).  Almost everyone seems to have some fatigue though.

I finished on Wednesday, and got through with only some redness by the end -  like mild sunburn (not painful), although I've been told it will continue coming to the skin's surface for a couple of weeks, maybe slightly worse but not much.  My radiation was the five-week one which was at a lower dose than the shorter version - so your six weeks may be at a lower dose as well.  My oncologist decided to give me the five week version because they were covering such a large area going up to the lymph nodes in my neck, which sounds like what you're having.

I used strata xrt - not every hospital is into it.  Here in WA, they gave me lots of sample tubes, and I was given a card (stamped by the hospital) which gives a 40% discount if you order from Stratpharma direct - I also got one from Breast Care WA, the lovely nurse there sent me a 10g tube, I don't know where she got that from!)  so there may be other organisations who have a discount card.

It's hard to know for sure whether the Strata made a difference, but the nurse I saw this week certainly thinks so.  You apply it very thinly, but you still might use a bit if you have a large area to cover.  I bought a 20g tube and was given about 25g worth of free sample tubes.  I did use the sorbolene in the evenings because I might not have had enough otherwise, I'm still going on my 10g tube now.  A nurse told me to ask for more samples if I needed them, but I didn't.

The other things to consider are - because you have to spread the strata quite thin, you have to apply very gently so as not to stretch the skin.  A nurse told me to put little dots of it on the area and then spread out gently to join the dots.  So I put the dots especially on the reddest area, then spread out gently from there.  It didn't wind up being a problem for me but if your skin got tender it might be tricky, if that makes sense.  If you are able to get samples, you could try it out for a little while before ordering the $100 tube (hopefully reduced to $60 plus postage).

Secondly - in favour of the strata, you can have a shower in the morning, put it on and let it dry a few minutes, then it doesn't matter when you have your radiation.  Whereas with sorbolene, I was told you shouldn't put that on within a couple of hours before going to radiation, as it can attract the radiation to the surface of the skin (or something like that - at least that's what a nurse told me).

Also - the only pain I experienced was, after a little while, stretching my arm back in position for the radiation sessions.  There was a little stretch on the front of my chest.  So do your physio exercises religiously, and if it gets too bad, go see a physio.  I was going to see the hospital physios, but I only had a little while to go and it didn't get too bad, since I was doing my exercises, and the radiation sessions are so short.

Anyway I hope that helps in some way,  all the best with it.   :)