Hi Jenny,
a while ago I emailed about taxol and you wrote back sayi9ng you had got a potentially lethal infection on it, and it was so rare they wrote a paper about it. Well, the same has just happened for me. I was in hospital for 2 weeks, got very very sick, a pneumnia, that was also potentially lethal, and also so rare they are writing about it.
I wanted to ask you if you stopped the chemo while you were sick…and if so, how long for? I’ve missed 2 doses because of hospital, and i’m not due to go back to my hospital for another 10 days as they want me to rest and finish all my antibiotics b3fore they talk to me about starting chemo again. They have said I will resume it if I’m well anough, i just feel quite scared at the moment not being on it.
It would be great to hear more about what happened for you?
Thanks loads,
Jo
Hi Jo,
First off - have been thinking of you and hoping you are OK. I am so sorry to hear you’ve had the same sort of experience as I did.
What I got was called Rhodococcus equi and is basically a type of pneumonia that horses get. They had not seen it before at my hospital and so it took a while to diagnose. When humans get it, it is usually HIV patients, who like us, have compromised immune systems. I had to take oral antibiotics for two months to clear it up. The alternative was three weeks in hospital on intraveinous antib’s. When I got it, I’d just finished 12 weeks of taxol and they reckoned the reason I recovered was that my immune system was already improving after chemo(though I’d had to stop taxol a few times due to low blood counts). You should be fine having a few weeks off while you recover, as the chemo should still be in your system for a while to come.
Victoi (Vicky) on these forums also suffered a rare form of pneumonia whilst on or after chemo. The hospital told me that these kind of secondary infections are becoming more common in patients on chemotherapy.
As though we don’t have enough to deal with without this extra c**p. I know how scared you must feel - it made me feel worse than all the other rubbish we have to cope with. I do hope you are getting over it - I’m just glad to hear you are out of hospital. You’ll be OK. Anything you want to know - just ask.
Vicky - hope you are OK too!
Jenny
xx