One week down the Chemo route

Well Mrs B, I think that's everything covered. I wear nappies at night, it will give you VPL but might save you carrying the bucket around. 

I bet everyone was differet with chemo, I do remember being able to taste around about day three..  Good luck. X

Hi Norberry. Thank you for making me smile, you always do!

Everything tastes like cardboard to me at the mo, my appetite seems non-existent. Lost about 7 kgs in the last month! However I've been guzzling Lucozade which does have a bit of a taste!

Hugs, Barb la Bucket

I agree about the mint tea: utterly disgusting. Tried lots of herbal teas and they all tasted like boiled twigs from the garden. I found bottle green Ginger & lemon grass cordial was a great standby and it's very zingy - also still - I can't take any fizzy drinks after my surgery so bang went the G&Ts.  Hope you feel better soon.  Big hugs. Rainie x

Hi MrsBJH

Yes we are all different but there are commonalities for most of us. Day after treatment your system is boosted by the steroids you probably had as pre meds. Then the dreaded constipation - I found I worked out a regime of laxative taking which worked for me once I knew my pattern of response to the treatment.. As Rainie has said - anything ginger helps with nausea and you can usually taste it. The foot thing is a real pain, I have found for me a bath with lots of bath salts and some drops of essential oils helps them feel a little better. Good on you for 2 mile walk and lovely to see deer cross your path. Good luck with rest of week.

x

Hi Barb, 

Yes we are all different, and the chemos are different too, but some commonalities. You're every week then? When I did weekly I felt ok the day of, probably all doped up with steroids and zofran and a million other anti-nausea and other drugs. They all can make you drowsy. I know usually the 3rd or 4th day my blood counts would tend to bottom out, and some of the side effects would peak. I didn't vomit, the anti-nausea meds worked, but I had mouth sores and was generally raw all along my digestive tract - anything that is a mucus membrane can do that with chemo. I sometimes has very low energy, which sometimes was because of low red blood cells, and a couple of times I got infusions of red blood cells for this. I got the tingling you mention, and numbness, in hands and feet, but luckily it didn't get too bad. The numbness in my hands made me very clumsy, and mostly is gone now. I still get little tingles in my feet, but not bad. Once things bottomed out, I usually started to feel better and better as the next chemo loomed. I enjoyed eating more, moving more, etc. 

I also got some chemo where I was inpatient getting infusions and follow up care for about a week, then the next week was bad (even water tasted terrible - but still no vomiting!), then the third week was my "good week" and I did fun stuff then. It got to be a pattern, I planned fun stuff for my "week off".

The point being that you should feel better after you feel worse. Which, now that I look at when you wrote this, I see that you probably already know.

One other thing, over time (I think I had over a year of chemo) my body didn't seem to recover as quickly and I didn't feel better as soon after the infusion, so I guess it also depends on where you are in your chemo arc, so to speak.

Hope the rest of the week improved for you!

Patricia

Hi PatriciaV. I'm not having weekly chemo, it's 6 x cycles every 21 days - my post was about how I felt a week on. I think the side effects had pretty well gone by about day 11. Except for fingertips still tingling. I'm learning how to manage the constipation.

I noticed after my shower yesterday although I'm being super cautious with my hair, thanks for the advice someone passed on, quite a significant amount was attached to the comb. Also my scalp feels quite tender at the 'mo.

I've read on other posts as the cycles continue the side effects may accumulate and take longer to go away. 

I think my mindset is on cycle 3 when just after I'll have a CT scan to see how things are going. I used to think the 2 weeks between tests and results were bad enough, now it's 3 months!

Got the ginger and lemon grass cordial which is quite nice, even without the nausea which thankfully has gone! (as has the bucket)

Happy Christmas to you all in case I don't post before!

Barb xx

Sending you gentle hugs Barb, and lots of positive vibes xx