Chemo Countdow

I'm now five treatments into the T/H combo of chemo that I will receive, and so far the Taxol and Herceptin have had some nasty little side effects that are different from the Adriamycin and Cyclophosphamide that I previously received.

I was lucky on A/C in that I didn't have many side effects. A small rough patch on the roof of my mouth and a little soreness on my tongue around the fourth treatment, a very little bit of diarrhea, but no nausea. Food didn't taste very good and some was just downright disgusting. But otherwise, I was never "sick" from the A\C combination.

Taxol/Herceptin however, sucks. The first treatment was by far the worst. The infusion went fine and I sailed through work on Friday, September 6, but all hell broke lose that weekend. Saturday I woke to pain and feeling cold. I'm never cold. I'm always sweating and bitching about the heat, so to be cold in early September is odd for me. My legs felt like what I imagined it would be like to have "restless leg syndrome", and ached; I vaguely remember shin splints from my time on the varsity basketball team in high school. As I lay in bed, I would constantly keep moving my legs and trying to get comfortable, but nothing seemed to work. Saturday night I was shaking so bad my back hurt, my spine and shoulder blades felt like they were on fire from the violent shaking. My body would tense and I would just shake uncontrollably, and have to use every bit of willpower to make myself relax and stop. However, as soon as I got relaxed, the shaking would return. I was wearing a long sleeve T-shirt, under 2 blankets and still couldn't get "warm" or stop shaking. Finally, exhausted I managed to fall asleep but the sleep was restless. Sunday morning I experienced for the first time bone pain. I had heard of this from other patients, but not yet experienced it myself and was honestly hoping I wouldn't! My legs ached and some of my joints felt like I had arthritis. I took 6 ibuprofen in 5 hours and the limit was 8 in a 24 hour period. Thankfully I was able to get a prescription from my doctor for the pain which helped tremendously.