Hi! My mum finished her chemo (8 sessions),three weeks ago.Now she started to have nausea, blood pressure variations combined with heat waves.Could be still the effect of the therapy (taxotere)or can we think about the reappearance of a cancerous tumour? Thanks.
Chemo se’s stay with you for a long time after treatment. It’s more than likely that, but your mum will still be under her onc and surgeon so should be having a natter there.
Chemo SEs really do take quite a long time to finally wear off and at three weeks post-chemo there is still a lot of it in your mum’s system. If you are really worried give her BCN a call or have a word with one of the chemo nurses. They will be used to questions like this and it’s better to ask than to be worried.
Nymeria x
Thank you for your answers.But it’s possible to have all this reactions that my mum has.What’s your experience?
Without being rude. If those are all the se’s your mum has had, she has done remarkably well! A lot of the tax ladies have had some very nasty se’s and many have been hospitalised, me being one of them. I’m months out of tax now, and still suffer with many se’s and i’ve got rads to go yet after three ops this summer. It’s normal for you to feel edgy regarding your mum’s dx. What sort of info was she given prior to chemo? All of us were given books, and we are have a phone number for 24/7 advice. You mention 3 weeks have passed. In a three week cycle, she will be closing chemo now so any se’s will new and raw.
You and your mum may get comfort in phoning the helpline attatched to your onc unit, or bcn. Take care.
Well we live in Romania where the medical system is a disaster.We don’t have helpline or 24/7 advice.She was informed about some of the side effects.The Tax seems much stronger then the other substances she had before.This site for me is a great help, because I can have discussions with You, being in similar situation with mum.In our case is hard to get in touch with the doctor, often we can speak only with her assistant.Tomorrow will be exactly three weeks from her last theraphy with tax, which was the final one, and few days ago she started to have nausea, the blood pressure variation and this kind of hot flashes, I don’t know how normal are this.
Hi Deanima
Sorry to hear that you haven’t got 24/7 support or a helpline in Romania, but if you need to ask anything and you can’t get the answer you are looking for from these forums then BCC offer an Ask the Nurse email service, here’s the link:
breastcancercare.org.uk/breast-cancer-services/ask-nurse
Also we have a phone number for the helpline here for overseas users (+44) 2076 200 077, just remember though that the helpline is open UK time (9-5 Mon to Fri and 9-2 Sat)
Hope this helps. Take care,
Jo, Facilitator
Thank You Jo, You are very kind.
Deanima - the thing with chemotherapy is that it seems to cause all sorts of weird side effects. You’ll see from the forums that women experience a huge range of different things.
can I ask how old your Mum is and whether she is already through the menopause? Chemotherapy can put women into menopause and set off hot flushes.
I had severe nausea throughout my taxotere treatment and the side effects took about 6 - 8 weeks to wear off after finishing.
Is your mum vomiting or is it just nausea?
You mention blood pressure variations - how do you know this?
Have you checked your mum’s temperature to make sure there is no sign of infection? I’d keep a very close eye on that as her white cell count will probably still be quite low at this point.
take care, elinda x
Dear Elinda
My mum is 62 and she’s on menopause since 1999.She’s not vomiting just having nausea.I take her blood pressure every day with a digital device.Her temperature sometimes goes little bit over 37.Three weeks ago she finished her chemo with Taxotere and just few days ago she started to have this blood pressure variations,nausea,hot flushes.She has back pain and discommode with her stomach and liver.Right now I think that her stomach problem causes the most unpleasant state, and I don’t know what else can we try, it seems that nothing is working.