Taxotere Wrongly Infused - Anyone had similar??

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Hi,

Im looking for some advice… my mum was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in July and after lumpectomy, SN Biopsy, auxilularly clearance she has now started chemotherapy.

She had her 1st chemotherapy treatment a week past Monday but there was a problem with it! when checked before infusion it was a cloudy solution - the nurse whom was new to the ward checked with at least 2 others (more senior & experienced nurses) that I heard to ensure that it was safe to infuse.

About half an hour into the hour infusion the drip machine started beeping and regardless of what they did (ie forcing it through) it continued to beep and stop infusing. The solution appeared to be fizzing up inside the line and there appeared to be lots of air bubbles in the line. At this point they changed the line to a new one and tried again.

This did not work and again the machine continued to beep and stop infusing.

Eventually they called the pharmacist who said she had never seen anything like it before. The solution appeared to be seperating and when looking at the 1st line they had taken down there was what appeared to be a white chalk like substance in lumps within it.

At this point it was decided that this should be discarded and she should be given a newly made up dose of taxotere for the remainder as there was still 22.7 ml to be infused aswell as the 2 lines that had been discarded by this point.

Half an hour later they decided not to give her any more and she was just to go home - as they could not accurately tell how much she had already received.

Has anyone else had issues with Taxotere infusion like this?! Mum felt extremely sick and tired from about 10 minutes after the infusion began and by the time we got to the car she was being sick! This continued with her not even keeping water down for about 36 hours until we phoned Gdocs out to give her anti sickness injection. Gradually she has gotten better and now its although she didnt have any chemo at all…

Has anyone else had this problem with Taxotere or the severe sickness basically as soon as it started infusing??

Sorry for the long postbut just wanted to see if anyone else had had a similar experience???

Thanks xx

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Hello - sorry to hear about your mum’s exp that sounds truly horrible.
in answer - no - for me – tax did not make me feel sick/ be sick. i was told by my oncologist that although some people find tax tough to tolerate, normally you don’t feel as sick on it as you do on, for example FEC.
I really hope your mum feels ok and that her team sort out her treatment very soon!! best wishes XX

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So sorry to hear and hoe your mum is recovered.

Hasn’t happened to me either and from what you describe, sound like something was wrong with infusion. I have never had this happen. Solution is usually clear.

How long are they going to wait before next one? They should be able to get a rough idea by checking her neutrophils. Hope this hasn’t put her off. I have never been sick although tax can be tough in other ways. Check out the positive posts about tax thread to give you some idea about common side effects.

Laurie x