I have started this topic on behalf of new user Carol
Kind Regards
Lucy
Moderator
Breast Cancer Care
Hi everyone,
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in September 2002. I had surgery, chemotherapy, zoladex injections, and was on tamoxifen. Everything was fine for nearly 4 years and then all hell broke loose! I returned from a wonderful holiday in the French Alps with my younger son and husband, only to find that I had to return to hospital to have an FNA on my breast as they had seen something irregular on my yearly MRI scan. This came back negative and I was told it was fat necrosis, but to be sure they also did a core biopsy which was another red herring. However during this time my husband noticed a small lump had appeared above my right eye on my forehead. To cut a long story short, it turned out to be breast cancer cells that had eaten into my skull bone, I had a craneotomy and part of the skull bone was replaced with titanium. After various bone scans and finally an MRI scan, I found out 3 days before Christmas, that the pain I had in my lower back was as I suspected, metastatic cancer, that had spread to the spine.
I had 5 radiotherapy treatments to help with pain relief, and it was suggested I take Xeloda. Before this I had a CT scan and found I also had small deposits on the right lung and also some fluid. I started taking xeloda 2 days before my 44th birthday back in January. I had to go into hospital at Easter because the fluid in my lung had increased, making breathing very difficult and had 7 litres drained from it! 4 weeks later I had to go to the local hospice as the bonefos tablets were not controlling the level of calcium in my blood, and I had to have an infusion of a similar drug to bring it to a normal level. I came home for the weekend and then had to be taken by ambulance to another hospital as my breathing problems had returned. I found out that the fluid had returned to the same level as before and I had a similar procedure, but this time under general anaesthetic; it had only taken 5 weeks to build up again!
I had stopped my chemo for some time and was told by my oncologist on the 21st of June, that the chemo had not worked as he had hoped and he advised against taking taxotere as he thought it would half any time remaining to me.
Is there anyone else in my position who has been told that taxotere is too toxic for them, and if so what are they taking now?
kind regards,
Carol