Hi,
Yesterday my wife was due to start her first chemotherapy with paclitaxel. Within a couple of minutes, her face went red and had tingling lips.
Immediately the nurse said reaction and a dozen doctors and nurses were swarming her. Oxygen masks, lots of questions proceded.
Now on a ward recovering.
Has anyone else experienced similar with taxol?
I’m sorry that happened to your wife. Its really scary when everyone rushes in and panics. I had 4x dense does Paclitaxel sessions and whilst I didnt have a reaction straightaway, I think the anti allergy nausea drugs they gave me worn off and felt really unwell during the last hour i.e. fever, nausea and feeling faint. At my last one, they checked my blood pressure and found it to be too low so they pressed the emergency button. Once recovered, they will try again, I assume upping the anti allergy drugs and administer the drug more slowly. I did feel my hands getting affected during it and after, i developed neuropathy. I bought a compression sleeve and already had compression socks which are supposed to help. Hope she gets better!
I had strong nausea during my first paclitaxel treatment and palpitations later in the week. I didn’t not carry on with this treatment.
The staff was great and made all the checks needed before deciding to stop this treatment.
I hope your wife is feeling better.
I’m sorry to hear that and hope your wife recovers quickly. I’ve been having weekly paclitaxel for the last seven weeks and every other week someone has had a reaction. So I don’t think it’s uncommon and seems to be retrievable, but unpleasant and frightening nevertheless.
I had a reaction with my first dose of Paclitaxel. They stopped the treatment immediately, I had some oxygen, extra antihistamines and steroids and recovered fairly quickly.
My consultant suggested reducing the dose to 90% and giving it a little slower. For most people this is sufficient to stop the reaction. However, in my case it didn’t work. My reaction was less severe but still resulted in the treatment being stopped on the day.
I had a letter from the consultant where it was suggested swapping to Abraxane (nab-Paclitaxel) which is a slow release version. However, when I met with the consultant he initially said he wanted to try again with regular Paclitaxel. I just said that I couldn’t face it again so he agreed to the swap.
I found the Abraxane treatment was fine. The drip is much quicker to deliver. The slow release mechanism means I couldn’t cold cap though so I did lose all my hair. However that grew back very quickly once I had finished the treatment.
I hope your wife is able to find a solution that works for her.
Nikki has been in hospital since Tuesday. There is an big infection somewhere, with lots of antibiotics. A litre of fluid on her lung has been drained but what’s causing a big concern is very high heart rate 
I can’t comment on the infection, but just wanted to wish your wife a speedy recovery.
There are a number of people who react to paclitaxel and they should switch your wife to NAB paclitaxel which is standard for the NHS where people have had an allergic reaction to standard paclitaxel.
Hope your wife recovers well and they switch to the different drug without suggesting reducing the dose first (some consultants try this but often without any more success than the full dose)
Spikey