I just finished 4 treatments of A+C and the end of June will start Taxol once a month for 4 months then Herceptin once a month for 12 months. My ? is in others experiences with these drugs which gives the most trouble. So far A+C has been doable with just fatique the first week after. Still have my hair thankfully. Thanking you in advance for your comments.
For me AC got progressively worse and the last one a week ago really knocked me out with headaches, vomiting and severe nausea. I lost all my hair about 12 days after the 1st AC . I start tax on 15th June and am due to start herceptin soon also. Sorry I can’t help anymore but I think individuals react so differently to the drugs it is hard to tell which one is worse. I am hoping tax will be kinder to me than AC was, even my chemo nurse said it was a good thing I wasn’t having anymore AC!
It’s not always the drug combo as much as a person’s individual body that can make a difference. Generally speaking, much like childbirth and pregnancy, if one is young and/or strong, then one has more energy reserves to fight some of the SEs.
Existing chronic, serious medical conditions also make a big difference to how any chemo drug affects the whole body.
Lastly, the dose is calculated on an estimate of the body surface area based on height v weight. My Oncy got that a wee bit wrong and a 20% reduction in dose really helped reduce severe SEs for me.
Hiya - am having different chemos and each has had different SEs but all ones that were predicted in documentation as possible ones.
Sorry - what is A+C?s
thanks
Hi,
I found AC doable but each time the SEs took longer to wear off and by the time I had #4 I was pleased to come off it. Sadly Tax and my body hated each other on first sight and I had nothing but trouble. So bad that in the end after only two instead of the planned 4 it was decided to stop altogether.
The difference for me was that with AC I had pretty much all the ‘traditional’ SEs associated with chemo in general but with Tax my body rebelled right from the start and everything was twice as bad but the worst bit was the damage to my immune system which, six weeks post treatment, I am still struggling to recover from. However, my experiences were much worse that the average person’s and it’s very true to say that everyone reacts slightly differently to each drug based on their own fitness etc.
For Francesw - AC stands for Doxorubicin(Adriamycin originally) & Cyclophosphamide.
Nymeria x