Hi All, I’m hoping someone can ease my worries, i know that many of you have been living with secondaries for a long time, and i was wondering if any of you have had docetaxol which hasn’t worked but been switched to xeloda which has worked?
Currently having tax and herceptin but scan results show new activity in bones and some tiny spots on lung which they are not sure about,chemo been postponed until they compare all scans together and decide what to do, they mentioned possibly changing to xeloda.
Sorry to hear y news I have lung mets I’m on caboplatain / taxol which worked great for me 70/50 percent reduction maybe u can ask about that chemo hope they sort u soon kp in touch
I haven’t tried yet xeloda myself - although I know there are others on the forum doing very well with it.
But I thought you might be interested in something I read yesterday on a USA bc forum. It was a discussion of a trial for a stage 4 vaccine that many people are trying to get on - I’m considering it myself - but they only accept patients that have stable mets because chemo kills the vaccine, so they have to be able to not have chemo for 9 months. There are a number of patients with quite advanced mets that wanted to join - and the doctor running the trial treated them with Xeloda to get them to the stage where they were stable enough to join the trial - it seemed to work extremely well for these women, who had all had previous chemo failures. So it certainly can work where previous chemos have failed - I hope it will do for you too.
I haven’t had to have more chemo yet, just the initial FEC and Tax - I’m still going through hormonals. But if you start a thread with Xeloda in the title I’m sure you’ll get more responses - there’s someone here that’s been on it for about 7 years, but I don’t want to say the name in case I get it wrong!
Thanks again, I will have a look at that, please let me know if you go for the trial and how you get on. I might have a chance to take part in a trial of the new her2 drug pertuzamub, waiting for onc to find out if i meet the criteria. It’s all a bit scarey as it is still relatively new but i might have to seriously consider it as herceptin doesn’t seem to be working.
Might try posting another thread like you suggested about changing chemo.
It’s grim when we’re told that a chemo hasn’t worked… happened to me 6 months ago. I have liver and bone mets, not lung mets (and not on herceptin), and I wanted docetaxel but my oncs said I should have weekly taxol (paclitaxel) as it’s now the ‘gold standard’. With taxol I had bad side effects and some progression With hindsight I’m glad that I hadn’t been given docetaxel!
Now on cycle 8 of Xeloda (capecitabine) and it’s working well.
Thanks for the response Mrsblue, it does help to reassure me that others have experienced the same and are now on something that is working. How long have you been on xeloda and how have you found it, side effects etc?
which links to many previous postings about capecitabine / Xeloda and its side effects. That should give you - and others! - a reasonably balanced picture.
