Last week I had my fourth of, hopefully, 6 rounds of this chemotherapy - Taxotere.
The main side effects of this chemotherapy, so far, have been, well, interesting. There's the obvious sickness, which I can handle pretty well with the anti sickness meds I get given. Then there is the fatigue - which comes on in waves and indiscriminately. There are also the tummy issues - it goes one way or the other - if you get what I mean! And something that I didn't experience last time, but have this time, is chemo mouth - the best way to describe chemo mouth would be that feeling when you've cleaned your teeth with a particularly abrasive toothpaste and it feels like it has stripped the entire lining of your mouth. But ALL the time. Nothing tastes right and everything feels like it's behind a barrier. The only thing that I can actually enjoy is mango. Oh, and there are the nosebleeds. My WBC count is a bit low and so my nose is bleeding every time I sneeze. Which is a barrel of laughs! Especially when you wake up with one!
The main side effects of this chemotherapy, so far, have been, well, interesting. There's the obvious sickness, which I can handle pretty well with the anti sickness meds I get given. Then there is the fatigue - which comes on in waves and indiscriminately. There are also the tummy issues - it goes one way or the other - if you get what I mean! And something that I didn't experience last time, but have this time, is chemo mouth - the best way to describe chemo mouth would be that feeling when you've cleaned your teeth with a particularly abrasive toothpaste and it feels like it has stripped the entire lining of your mouth. But ALL the time. Nothing tastes right and everything feels like it's behind a barrier. The only thing that I can actually enjoy is mango. Oh, and there are the nosebleeds. My WBC count is a bit low and so my nose is bleeding every time I sneeze. Which is a barrel of laughs! Especially when you wake up with one!
My main issue with this chemo is I literally have no clue if it's working and I won't until I have my scans in September, but I guess I just have to hope and believe that it is!
In the last month, I've also started a couple of new forms of treatment too - Herceptin and Pertuzumab. My original tumour was tested for all the cancer markers and came back ER+ which means it feeds off oestrogen, and the new cancer is also ER+.
When the original tumour was tested for something called HER2 in August of 2016, it came back negative. But strangely when the cancerous lymph nodes in my neck were tested, they came back positive, which confused my oncologist somewhat as cancers don't, as a rule, like to switch from a negative to a positive in the HER2 stakes.
But, because the move from - to + is so rare he also had the labs re-test my original tumour to see if there was anything that they missed.......And it turns out that they had missed it in the first tumour.......so now I have to have a brain scan because HER2+ cancers have a nasty habit of wandering to the brain too, and none of my scans earlier this year went that high!
So, anyway, my oncologist started me on the Herceptin and Pertuzumab infusions at the same time as I'm having chemotherapy. Getting these new drugs meant that round 3 of chemo was pushed a week, but I've had two of them now......and besides it meaning that treatment takes a good hour longer than before, it's not really had any other side effects. Well, not any that I've noticed on top of the chemo side effects!
Tomorrow I'm back in the hospital for my Xoladex injection - which is there to keep me in the menopause. And to get my nose cauterised to try and stop the nose bleeds! Finger crossed
So, anyway, my oncologist started me on the Herceptin and Pertuzumab infusions at the same time as I'm having chemotherapy. Getting these new drugs meant that round 3 of chemo was pushed a week, but I've had two of them now......and besides it meaning that treatment takes a good hour longer than before, it's not really had any other side effects. Well, not any that I've noticed on top of the chemo side effects!
Tomorrow I'm back in the hospital for my Xoladex injection - which is there to keep me in the menopause. And to get my nose cauterised to try and stop the nose bleeds! Finger crossed
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