This transcript was extracted from the ‘The New Normal’ – What to expect after breast cancer treatment‘ video.

Hello everyone. Hello. Will we get started. Gosh, look at all the faces. Oh, this is great. This is great. Hello, everyone. My name is Amy Wilson. I’m the Macmillan Information and support manager in the Northern Trust. And welcome to our Breast Cancer Health and Wellbeing event 2025. So one of our biggest ambitions in cancer services is actually improving the follow up and ongoing support for people affected by breast cancer.

So that really is the purpose of today’s event, to provide you with additional education and information about how to manage and improve your own health in a way that suits you. Tips on what to look out for and who to contact should you be concerned, and other support available. So you’ll see. There’s lots of, charity tables around, around the room that we’d love for you guys to engage with.

We have an interesting program planned for you today with informative talks from our breast team and our allied health professionals, and as well as a story from our patient representative. So I just want to quickly thank Joanne again for being here today. So we are recording today’s event. You will have seen the scary cameras in the background.

I will reassure you that it is anonymous. It is just recording our lovely mugs up here. So if after today’s event you’re thinking, oh, I’d love to see that again, then please do let us know and we can get you the link to that recording. It will be on the Cancer Services website after this because we will be covering a lot of information.

So if you want to engage with that, again, we can give you the link. We do want you to keep questions to the end. Again, just to keep the recording anonymous, but also just to keep on time because that weather. I mean, come on, let’s be honest, we all want to be out on that today. So we’re going to really try and keep in time.

So just a bit of housekeeping quickly. We’re not expecting a fire alarm. But if we are the emergency exits is one behind you over there, one back where you came in and also behind us here. Up the stairs. I feel like an air hostess channeling an air hostess. Toilets are just back where you came. And to the left.

And if we could silence our phones. I don’t even know if there’s interesting mobile phone ringtones anymore, but if we could try and just keep those on silent, that would be great. I know the production company would appreciate that as well. There’s water available just at the front, so please do avail of that at any time.

And we do have a bit of a coffee break where there will be, scones and fruit and tea and coffee as well. So, that would be actually up here. So if anyone’s not able to actually get up the steps there, just let someone with a lanyard know and we will deliver it straight to your table. All right.

So you each got a information pack whenever you first came in. So in there is an agenda of the different speakers today. There’s an evaluation form for the end, a pen, a summary of the information tables around the room, key messages as well. So key messages that we want you to take away from today. And there’s also a free scarf from scamp and dude, so scamp and dude actually donated scarves for today’s event.

00:03:19:22 – 00:03:40:17
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So you each got a free scarf which is great and we gave you a sweet as well because we just wanted to treat you. So once again, thank you so much for being here today and for your commitment to improving your health and wellbeing. I hope you find today’s events informative, engaging and empowering. So we’ll go to our very first speaker, who is Bernie McGucken.

So over to Bernie.

Thank you. Yeah. Hello everybody. I’m probably a new face to a lot of you. I joined the breast care team in February. But I’ll go through this talk and hopefully it makes sense. So I’m going to talk about what to expect after breast cancer treatment.

That’s me. I’m going to cover the common long term side effects after treatment for breast cancer, how to manage these long term side effects, and what happens now. So whenever you find out you’ve got breast cancer or you’ve got breast cancer, we we’ll discuss six different possible treatments that we can give you. We will discuss surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, hormone treatment, targeted therapy and immunotherapy.

Following treatment it’s natural to feel weak, wounded, battered and bruised. You will noticed or have noticed changes in your body that I will now discuss. You may notice changes in your breast and arms. Pain in the breast can be shooting, stabbing, burning, numb, sensitive around the scar on your arm. This pain can start immediately or can, develop with an interval of 2 to 3 months.

Pain after breast surgery, there’s different types of pain you will, can develop after breast surgery. Nerve pain. Whenever the surgeon is doing your surgery, he’s cutting, stretching and bruising them nerves. You can get injury to other nerves in your chest area from nerve. Him cutting the nerve endings and there’s a thing you can get called phantom breast pain.

It’s pain in the area where the tissue has been removed. Them nerves are injured, but your brain continues to send signals to the breast area, even though your breast might not be there anymore. Soft tissue pain. This will be scar pain. You can get pain due to implants. You can get capsular contraction. That’s, scar tissue that can form whenever you’ve had your implant and be hardened around that implant can move and that can cause pain.

You can have pain in a donor site. If you’re having reconstruction, that will be the back or the abdomen.

Other causes of pain. You can have preexisting pain conditions osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and costo chondritis. Other causes of pain after breast surgery. You can have carpal tunnel syndrome, frozen shoulder, emotional factors, anxiety and depression, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and Lymphoedema can all cause pain.

Sorry I’m trying to control the clicker, clicker and turn my page and speak in the microphone at the same time.

So what can we do to help and reduce this pain? What you can do is wear supportive bras during the day and night and soft bras with no wires. You can take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory tablets like ibuprofen. Other medication that your GP can prescribe, such as Lidocaine patches or there is another name for them, Versatis patches and local anesthetic patches.

You can get gentle massage the area, you can do that yourself. Put moisturizer on the area and gently massage it. Or there’s a specific thing you can get called scar therapy. You can moisturize daily. Gentle exercise. Try not to overexert. I have patients phone me all the time and I tell them to rest after surgery 4 to 6 weeks.

But they say Bernie, I’ve got while pain in my shoulder and I says, what have you been doing? Bernie, I’ve been out in the garden or Bernie, I’ve been hoovering, Bernie, I’ve been mopping. So, you need to, if you notice that shoulder starting to get stiff, you need to be resting it or you can also avail of complementary therapies and acupuncture will help.

So after cancer treatment you can experience changes to the breast. Different changes can present as swelling of the breast. The breast can feel firm and hard. Irregular lumpy scars. Your breast will be a bit smaller depending on what surgery you’ve had done, and the shape of the breast will change. And also there can be reddening and discoloration of the skin.

You can develop changes to your arm after surgery. So muscle stiffness is very common. Cording, now cording is a scar tissue in the armpit, it feels like a tight cord or a wire extending down the arm towards the elbow and hand. Now if you think you were having these, we have a physio works specifically for the the trust, and if you had had your surgery or you’re developing any of these symptoms, you would phone the breast care nurses and I would refer you on to the specialist physio when they can see what they can do about that.

You will have restricted movements and strength of your arm. Your arm can swell and you can develop lymphoedema. And I’m going to talk about reconstruction after reconstruction surgery. The breast itself may feel spongy. The breast will feel cold to touch. There’ll be a lack of sensation to the breast and the nipple area. The breast will feel less responsive to pressure, to pleasure.

You can have pain and reconstruction to the breast and the sites where you’ve had your reconstruction taken from. And scars and adhesions can cause chest pain, limited mobility and flexibility. So what happens now after you’ve had your surgery and your treatment? We will keep a close eye on you for five years. You’ll have annual mammograms until the age of 50, and then you will fall into the category of breast screening program.

Because that’s when we start your mammograms. Normally, after you get your mammogram, your results are posted our 3 to 4 weeks later. Sorry. If you have any concerns, sorry to change the slide. If you have any concerns, contact the Breast Care Nurse. Now, one of the most important things after you’ve had breast surgery, breast cancer, breast cancer surgery is to constantly be checking your breast, self-examination.

If you’re examining yourself and you find anything abnormal, please phone the breast care nurses and we can get you up to breast clinic and get you checked. So how do you do this? Touch your breasts. Can you feel anything unusual? Look for changes. Any change in the shape or the texture. Check anything unusual with your breast care nurse, phone us up and we’ll get you up to clinic.

How do you do the breast examination? You stand in front of a mirror. Hands on the hips. Pull your shoulders back. Lift both arms above your head and look at your breasts. You can lie in the bed stand in the shower, raise arm above your head, opposite hand. Take the opposite breast and use three fingers. Soft padding at the top of the fingers and move around the breast and circular motions.

So that picture there shows you how you should be examining your breasts. The important thing is to examine the whole area. Remember, take some right into your armpit over the whole chest area until just above your collarbone. Now if you do find something, what to look for and what to report. So if you notice any changes to your breast, if you notice a change in the size of the breast, any puckering or dimpling in the skin, if you have constant pain in the breast, any lumps or thickening or any swelling in the breast.

If you notice any redness or nipple rash, if you notice that your nipples are inverted or there’s any nipple discharge, these can all be causes for concerns. So what to do if you have these concerns? First port of call is to phone me or one of the other breast care nurses. And we have a number up there. Or if you have any concerns and you’re getting oncology treatment, say radiotherapy or chemotherapy, you can contact Ashlene who’s up speaking next.

Now. If you’re concerned about something that’s not related to your breast. So if you notice that you have an unexplained weight loss, if you’re lost your appetite, you’re having a persistent cough, shortness of breath, pain in your joints or muscles, or severe headaches. These could all be signs of cancer somewhere else in the body. So we would need to get them checked out.

So contact your GP or your oncology nurse practitioner. There is a very good app if you want to do some internet surfing, breast cancer now. Now most of the booklets you get whenever you come up to the breast clinic are the breast cancer now ones. They’re excellent information for breast cancer patients. So I would recommend that to you to have a wee look at.

That’s just more info on the breast cancer now. And. This is me. Things may never go back to normal. You may need to create a new normal. And that’s okay. Everybody in this room has been through breast cancer or are still going through their treatment. I’m very glad that you came here today to listen to me. Thank you.