Anal cancer

Hi 

Welcome to the anal cancer forum, you have come to the right place for advise and information.

I am pleased to hear that your wife has got through her treatment. She is now on the road to recovery however, I’m afraid it can be quite slow and symptoms can pop up along the way.

As you know the treatment is very short however, she has received a highly toxic mix of treatment along with all sorts of other mediation, pains killers etc and this will take some time to recover from. The radiation continues to work for several more months so all sorts of side effects can arise and linger.

I understand how the sickness must be worrying you. The radiation effects the bowel and causes inflammation this could be why your wife is experiencing this side effect.

If you haven’t already done so, I would advise that you contact your wife's specialist cancer nurse to get some advise/reassurance. If you are unable to speak with your wifes nurse/medical team, you can call the Macmillan helpline (no. below) and speak to a nurse.

Whilst I didn’t personally experience sickness post treatment, I know there are people on this forum who did, hopefully someone will respond to your message.

I’m sure the sickness will be an expected side effect of treatment and will eventually pass with her healing. I hope she starts to feel better very soon.

Wishing you all the best for her scans in 8 weeks time. I hope you know that treatment for this cancer is curative and very effective. Lots of people, including myself, have had positive results. I finished treatment last June and am 15 months NED and counting.

Keep in touch.

Sarah x

Hi,

Thanks for your very supportive response. What I did not mention was that the cancer had slightly affected her liver so the consultant has said that until the cancer is resolved down below he cannot fix the liver so we are waiting for the scan tind out what happens next

if anything. Glad you are now OK from your experience hope all continues well.

Hi ,

I echo all that Sarah has said in her response. Sarah & I, although staged differently, went through the chemoradiotherapy at the same time & found that although there were many similarities in our reactions to the treatment there were also many differences. A lot of people suffer the worst of the side effects during treatment whilst mine didn’t kick in until after treatment had finished & I hardly moved or ate anything in the first 2 weeks post treatment then gradually began to improve so it’s feasible that the sickness may still be to do with your wife’s treatment although as Sarah has already said I think it’d be worth checking it out with either your wife’s oncology team or specialist nurse. Also the radiotherapy causes a lot of internal inflammation as well as continuing to do its thing for quite some time after the last treatment hence the wait for post treatment scans. There have been a couple of people on this forum that have had their livers affected too & although everyone is different hopefully someone will spot your post & offer a little advice/support. 

There are many people on this forum that have been diagnosed at all different stages that have had great responses to this treatment & like Sarah & myself are NED at present. 

I hope things settle down & start to improve very soon. 

Nicola