After 10 months on herceptin only, my oncologist thought it was time to have some chemo to try to shrink the breast tumour a bit more-lung mets have responded well to herceptin and tamoxifen.
Anyway, I went in to have my first dose of taxotere this week, and had a severe allergic reaction, which was dealt with very quickly by the staff. As this was the second time I’d tried, it is now obvious that I won’t be able to have any of the taxane drugs in the future. I’m starting on xeloda next week, but am really disapointed that taxotere will not be an option,as I understand it is one of most effective chemos.
So sorry to hear you have suffered an allergic reaction to the taxanes. I do know of other women who have the same reaction. One thing that I have heard as a work around, is that they can give it as a very slow infusion, overnight, to try and avoid allergic reaction. Maybe this would be an option for you? It may be worth asking your onc about it. Otherwise, Xeloda is just great, in my opinion, and I hope it works for you.
I had an allergic reaction to Taxotere - not a severe one but enough to make them stop the infusion immediately. They gave me an infusion of Piriton and then the Taxotere infusion very slowly. They did this each time and I was fine after that.
I had a massive allergic reaction to 2nd dose of taxotere after just 3 mls. So have been changed to cmf. (had 3 fec, 1 tax and 2 cmf). Spoke to oncologist at length about this - but he told me due to the type of reation I had - I was more at risk form having the tax than not.
There is definetly alteratives oout there.