Rapidly approaching the end of first round of chemo . What to expect.

Hi again Heidi Blunderwoman and well done getting your first treatment done.

What to expect?

Regardless of the chemo regime most people find that they need all the proposed chemo cycles...... and DLBCL being a fast growing High-grade non-Hodgkin lymphoma the treatment tends to be aggressive and even if you are quickly showing a good metabolic response there tends to be a belt and braces approach to ensure that every cancer cell is killed off....... but that's not to say that changes can be made if required.

Most people get a mid treatment scan to see how things are going..... although I did not get one as it was completely obvious if it was or was not working.

Generally it takes about 48 to 72 hours for your body to break down and/or get rid of most chemo drugs. But the effects of the chemo on your growth areas and your general immune system will last for weeks and is important to remember that you may well be more open to infections at about days 7-14 as this tends to be the window when our immune system is at its lowest and there is a real Risk of infection…… then your body recovers in time for your next cycle….. but the more chemo you have the longer the recovery can take so the Fatigue can build up....... so by the end of treatment it could take a few months to recover completely.

Hi Heidi glad you are near the end of your treatment, my husband George had finished his treatment now, he had r chop as well and all his major organs are cancer free now, he did have to have radiotherapy as he had what they call a floater in his spine, he is waiting on his final scan on 4 May, but so far he is good but extremely tired, he feels exhausted but this will pass, his consultant is just fantastic she just explains everything to us,  she takes a "belt and braces" approach so until he has this last scan she will not use the R word, so he strong and can you get a consultant that can speak English?  I hope things go well for you.  Take care and good luck.

Hibbie

I had 6 R-CHOP and then I had two lots of high dose methotrexate a month apart after that.  Then I had a PET 6 weeks later.  I didn't have a mid-treatment scan as my lymphoma had produced visible masses which could be felt so it was quite apparent the chemo was doing something.  The plan was to use radiotherapy if there were any remaining trouble spots after chemo.

I definitely still had pain at remission and the fatigue took months to pass.  Three years on I still have some long term effects from chemo, as do many people who have R-CHOP (it's the vincristine that does it).

Give your body some time to start recovering from the chemo.  It's a huge assault on the system and recovery from that doesn't happen overnight.