Today my girl friends and I went to a spa and had the Garra rufa fish foot treatment… it was amazing!!! I’m now concerned though, that as I am now technically on chemotherapy (Xeloda tablets) that I shouldn’t have had that done??? They only eat the dead skin cells off your feet, they have no teeth so there’s no biting and opening of wounds or anything… My feet are in pretty good condition and have no split skin or veruccas/warts/anything on them…
Do we know if this is safe? I really want to do this again, but am concerned about any potential damage/infection (my low immune system) or any damage I could potentially do to the fish!!!
Great to hear you had a good spa-time today, and it was probably OK for you to have your feet “fishy-nibbled” before you get any hand/foot side effects from the capecitabine. In fact, you might not have any problems at all with your feet from the chemo, but if your soles start to be swollen, red, flaky, cracked, blistered or painful, you might want to give the fish a miss next time, if only to reduce the risk of picking up any stray “bugs” in the water.
Christie’s has a “chemo help line”, so you could ask them what they think – when I started capecitabine all those years ago, I rang them for reassurance when I got worried about little things to do with the chemo, e.g. varying the times of taking them to go for a meal out – they were very understanding and supportive.
. . . oh, and the fish might not like the taste of Udder Cream . . .
