Fast forward now to last Wednesday my first round of paclitaxel and herceptin. My regime is Paclitaxel every week for 12 weeks and herceptin every 3 weeks for a year then radiotherapy.
I arrive at the chemotherapy suite feeling very anxious, it’s the fear of the unknown. My biggest worry was how sick it would make me feel afterwards.
Had a chat with the chemo nurse, she explained what to look for if I was having an allergic reaction and to press my buzzer straight away. You had a saline drip put in after having a cannula fitted then I had steroids and anti-histamines through my iv. She wanted to leave these to get in to my system before she administered the chemo drug. So she proceed to give me my Herceptin injection into my thigh, although it’s only 5mg she has to administer it over 5 minutes, it was fine hardly felt a thing.
A lovely lady from The Macmillan Support centre came from down stairs to see me. She was really nice and she was going through some leaflets and a book that she had brought for me to look through. We were having a lovely chat when the chemo nurse set off my taxol infusion and within about 5 seconds my chest felt tight and I was struggling to breath. For a second I thought I was just having a panic attack as i was very nervous. It wasn’t, it was a full blown allergic reaction to the paclitaxel I couldn’t breathe, my chest was getting tighter, I saw flashing lights in front of my eyes, very dizzy and a horrendous pain in my back. The nurses all came running as the Macmillan lady shouted for help for me, they turned the infusion pump off straightway but I was still reacting badly. They drew up some anti-histamines and steroids I think, to reverse the reaction but it all felt like it was taking forever, with every breath I took in the next one felt like it was getting worse. They put the drugs through my cannula and slowly my breathing was coming back to normal, this was by far the scariest thing I have ever lived through, I actually thought that I was dying. They kept a very close eye on me, my blood pressure was sky high and I felt so tired afterwards.
About an hour later they wanted to try to give it me again but this time really slowly which meant what would normally be given over an hour would now be given over 2 hours at least. Anyway she started given me taxol again and within about 2 seconds my chest started tightening again and she stopped it straight away but this time I recovered by myself very quickly.
so as I reacted twice to it they won’t give me that drug again instead I met with my oncologist and she explained that from next week I would be having Nab-Paclitaxel which doesn’t have the solvent in like the first one that many people react to to. She said that nobody ever reacts to this new drug but she wasn’t sure if I could still have this one weekly or 3 weekly, she will let me know.
Despite what happened to me last week it hasn’t put me off going back next week to try again.
I will beat this cancer!
