Hi, not sure if this is the correct place to post but it won’t let me post in the treatment forum for some reason.
Background: my mum was diagnosed back in 2006 with multifocal infiltrating lobular carcinoma grade 3. She was node positive, ER positive, but Her2 negative.
She underwent a mastectomy, FEC 75 Chemo, radio therapy and then on to arimadex for 5 years. During the chemo she developed blood clots from the picc line in her arm and had to have a line placed in through the neck and was then administered chemo through the line which came out of her chest. she had to inject with clexane for 6 months to clear the clots. it was during this treatment she developed an abdominal hernia which has since become fairly large.
Her 5 year check up came up back in March 2012 and was told to come off all meds. when asked if she had any other concerns she presented with this:
In October 2011 she had the flu jab for the first time. She said a few days after this left her with a funny taste in her mouth/rough tongue. A few days after this she came down with what she thought was a sickness bug as it lasted about 5 days and she felt better but the funny taste and loss of appetite remained. In the months nov and dec she had 1 or 2 odd spells where she was sick once but due to the lack of appetite was losing weight.
In the early part of this year she was at an exercise class when her hernia popped out to an egg shape and she went to a & e, where she had x ray, ultra sound but nothing was found and she was given anti biotics for a week. The hernia had gone down before she’d got home.
Since then she had lost a fair amount of weight but her sickness spells had started to increase. When she mentioned this at her 5 year check the surgeon said it needed investigating due to her history of the breast cancer.
She went for a CT scan in early March to be told she had an enlarged lymph node in her stomach, which she then had biopsy’d. That came back as cancerous and was told she had nominal amounts in the nodes under her other arm. After then having an appointment with the oncologist she was told she has this diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer but also paraortic lymphadenopathy, compression of the ureters, mild bilateral hydronephorosis, left axilla, small nodule in the long with minimal pleural effifuision. I don’t fully understand what all this means but I did briefly look it up to get a rough idea.
She has just had her first session of chemo docetaxel and is feeling really quite rough. She is being sick ( but this was present before so not so to do with chemo), gone completely off her food ( even the little she did eat ) very sleepy. This will be day 10 after treatment. I guess what I want to ask is this normal for her to be feeling this way? She’s now on her 3 rd lot of anti sickness but that’s not improving but I’m thinking it won’t if it’s not chemo related? I don’t really know how I can help as its all been a bit quick and a bit of a shock as she has been really well up until now.
Would like to hear from anyone having the same chemo, although I know no 2 people are the same or anyone with any info that will help.
Many thanks in advance xx