Hi All, I'm from the March19 group, and wanted to put in a few tips from my experience because I was one of the unlucky ones who had an awful time through chemo. (Most of the rest of my group didn't, so please don't let this scare you.) I was originally due to have 3 FEC and 3 Docetaxol, it ended up being 2 FEC and 3 Abraxane, which is a different type of taxol. 1. Especially on FEC, clean your teeth after eating anything at all, with a very soft toothbrush. Even if your mouth is feeling sore and awful, this will help. 2. If you find yourself feeling extremely and severely down the day after your steroids finish, talk to your chemo team or your oncologist. If you are sitting there debating if you should ring them or not, you should. 3. Steroids can reduce your impulse control - consider cutting off your access to easy online shopping for a while unless you are rich enough to not care! 4. Bone pain from the taxol - mine was severe and after a couple of days I was prescribed a week's worth of slow release Tramadol, which helped immensely. Although it's an opioid it is a synthetic one and gives you far less constipation than the others. One other tip - through chemo, do not try to eat your favourite meal, whatever it may be. Having it associated with how you feel through chemo can put you off it for life. Also whatever you can eat during FEC will likely be completely different during the T phase. During FEC all I could eat was mashed potato, baked beans and veg soup with cheese. During T I couldn't eat any of that and couldn't cope with dairy at all, not even milk in my tea.I lived on marmite toast for 9 weeks!
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