Hello everyone,
I just registered here, and I am very glad to have found this forum. Since this is my first post, I hope that my signature file is coherent ... as I'm not totally fluent with all of the terminology as yet.
I've been doing some lurking here prior to posting, and I really appreciate the community here.
My father had significant difficulty with his first chemo treatment of Taxol, Carboplatin & Avastin -- so much so that we decided that, on the 9th day after the first treatment, we would quit. it just was too much. He was in so much pain that lying down hurt as much as it did to stand up. Since he was too fatigued to stand up, we had a real problem.
While the oncology nurse phoned him every day to follow up, I'm not sure he was able to articulate or even recognize the degree of trouble in which he was. It's hard to be analytical when you're that sick and trying so damned hard to be positive.
It turns out that we didn't need to make our case about quitting the chemo to the oncology team. Once they got a look at him on day 10 when he went in for his labs they canceled further treatments of their own accord and scooted him into his GP's office to get flooded with antibiotics. He had no white cells, so he couldn't even be admitted to the hospital because of the risk of staph or mrsa. So they gave him bone marrow stimulants over the next days to boost WBC.
Turns out he's amongst the 5% whom cannot tolerate the particular chemo cocktail that was favored by his oncologist.
So now, 5 weeks after the first treatment, we are waiting for him to recover from that first devastating infusion of chemo. We'll get the CT Scan done on 12 December and start to make some decisions regarding future treatment in the next week or so.
The oncologist has put 4 options on the table as being viable, one of which is Tarceva. My father has expressed a preference for that pill, going forward, and I can't blame him. I think that, if I were in his position, I would choose the same.
We're very lucky, in my opinion, to have a great oncology team right in my father's small town in Colorado. They are blunt, proactive and have diagnostic facilities nearby.
Thanks for hearing me out, and thanks so much for this great forum.
Best wishes,
Angela