Raised cardiac troponin enzyme

I don't have experience of raised heart enzymes, but they did reduce my dosage of docetaxel. The first dose knocked me over and I could barely get off the sofa for 10 days. I felt very poisoned and had various side effects - intense chills (uncontrollable shaking despite hot water bottles) combined with intense hot flushes that felt like mild panic attacks. Then pains everywhere, like a bad 'flu. I also had skin rashes, tongue sores, mouth sores, nose sores...!

They didn't like the sound of all that and said 10 days far too long to be feeling so low. With EC, it had been a few days then up and going for walks again.

They reduced my dosage to 85% which I had a long discussion about, My chemo was before surgery and I wanted to know it would still have an effect. I was willing to go through the next 2 cycles at full dose if it meant a better outcome. But oncologist said that the margins for chemo working are quite large - they give you the maximum dose to start with and it is relatively common to reduce if needed. It is still effective.

I was lucky enough to be able to see evidence of that - docetaxel shrunk my tumour more than the EC had but the side effects were much more manageable on the reduced dose. I still found it tough, and as chemo is cumulative, by the end I was pretty exhausted and dizzy, breathless etc from low bloods. But the reduced dose was much more manageable than that first dose.