Hello lovely people, new to the forum, and wishing you all good health and recovery. Thank you for your helpful posts.
I just wanted to flag up my experience at chemo yesterday in case it is useful for others being switched from Docetaxol to Abraxane. (It may not be true of all hospitals but is worth asking if this happens to you).
I have been Paxman cold capping on Docetaxol (two rounds out of six so far) with fairly good results. (kept 60% ? hair.)
But was switched to Abraxane after having reactions to Docetaxol. At the hospital yesterday for session 3, the nurses told me ‘we don’t cold cap with Abraxane.’ I was very upset, and cross because the oncologist had not mentioned it to me the day before.
I insisted on the cold cap for this session. I saw the head of oncology, who told me it is a question of capacity in the chemo suite - they need more chairs and cooling caps for the high patient demand. Because of the high demand and low capacity, they have a short list of drugs for which patients get the cold cap, so have drawn a line with Abraxane. They will have a meeting about this because many people react to Docetaxol and get switched to Abraxane mid way through treatment.
The doctor apologised when I let her know it was distressing to be offered the cold cap and have it taken away mid way through treatment. She said she didn’t think about the cold cap with change of chemo drug. (But had also said was aware it was an issue for these patients!)
It was astonishing to me that I had spoken to 3 oncologists about the change to Abraxane and none of them mentioned it - just left it up to the poor nurses to break the news on the day of treatment.
I know doctors are focused on keeping you alive but you would think they would have some awareness of how vital hair and hair loss is to patients!
In the end, I asked the ward sister if I could bring in a portable cooling cap during treatment, she said that as long as it doesn’t take longer I could bring in my own. So that’s my next research project!