Why I'm Finally Celebrating the End of Chemo

"What are you doing to celebrate?"

This was the question everyone asked when I told them that I'd had my last session of chemotherapy.  And why not?  We'd made a policy of celebrating every step of the way so surely we'd have a big celebration planned to mark the end of the chemo era?

The only problem was that I didn't feel like celebrating.  Give me a week, I told people, when I feel better and then we'll celebrate properly.  But here I am, two weeks later, and I still don't feel like a celebration.  My arms and legs still ache and feel weak.  I get short of breath if I attempt more than one flight of stairs.  When I look in the mirror I see a bald head, no eyebrows or lashes and ugly red Taxol cheeks.  My nails are brown and painful.  And I don't sleep well thanks to ongoing hot flashes and embarrassing itching. 

I'm still waiting to celebrate being free of chemotherapy.

Today, however, I met good friends for a catch-up lunch and we went somewhere I have wanted to go for ages - the restaurant on the top floor of the Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments, a beautiful art deco building with great views over town.  As our food arrived, it occurred to me that I would normally be at hospital at that time, every week, with a needle in my arm.  I might not feel better yet, but at least I don't have to do that anymore.

I took my first bite of delicious steak, shared a laugh with my friends and looked out over the domes and rooftops of Brussels - and raised my glass to celebrate the end of chemotherapy.

FEC/Taxol - A Not-Too-Scary Side Effects Story

When I first knew that I had to face chemotherapy, I was scared.  I also craved information about the side effects - not the dry lists of possible effects provided by the manufacturers but real experiences written by real people.  So I searched on line and found myself trawling through discussion forums...exactly the place where people post when they have problems.  When I had read about the horrible side effects that some people suffer, I was very scared indeed!

Five months later I am, unbelievably, at the end of my chemo experience and I can say, hand on heart, that it hasn't been anything like as bad as I had feared.  Yes, there have been tears and tough days and fairly often I've crawled back to bed for an afternoon nap but I've managed to get out of bed every morning to get the kids to school and never been stuck on the sofa all day.  I've kept up with the kids, not missed one of their events, been out with friends and on holiday...more or less carried on as normal if sometimes at a slower pace.  I remember dancing at a Peter Gabriel concert half way through FEC and thinking hey, I can still do this!  I did have to give up my voluntary job half way through but that wasn't because I felt too sick but because the weekly demands of Taxol meant that I just didn't have time.

So in this post I have recorded my side effects in the hope that it might help others who are hungry for information as I was when I started.  My chemo regime was originally FEC-T (nine weeks of FEC followed by nine weeks of Taxotere).  But in the end my white blood cell count was too low to tolerate Taxotere so I had Taxol instead and the whole process took a total of 20 weeks. 

This is a not-too-scary side effects story.  Of course, chemo affects everyone differently.  My message is that it can be manageable...so don't let yourself get scared by the horror stories as I did.

My FEC was administered every three weeks and involved quite a long session at the hospital as each of the three chemicals had to be dripped in one after the other with a saline rinse to start and finish.  It took around 4-5 hours each time.  I had a PICC line inserted in my arm before the first session as FEC can damage your veins and had to have it cleaned by a nurse every week.  

Immediately after chemo I felt fine, but be aware that FEC briefly turns your urine red, or you'll get a shock when you go to pee!

I found that each three week cycle followed the same pattern with the first week always the  toughest, the second week offering a few discomforts and the third week being much better.

Insomnia was my biggest problem for the first three or four nights (caused by the steroids in the Medrol I had to take to stave off nausea).  I was twitchy and the blood pounded in my head so I took headphones, soothing music and a book to bed with me each night. 

The Medrol did its job and I had little problem with nausea.  I did have bad indigestion though, if I ate a proper meal then my stomach would sound as if new year fireworks were going off in there!  Eating small, regular, bland snacks for the first week helped.

After the first week, the mouth ulcers started and my mouth felt raw and exposed (I ate a kiwi one time at this point - really bad idea).  The indigestion settled down by this point but I suffered with some constipation.

My hair fell out though it took longer than my oncologist had suggested, he said it would be around day 14 of the first cycle but in fact I didn't lose a single hair for 27 days when it suddenly all fell out in the shower.

My periods carried on for a couple of months before stopping.

The problem that dogged me all the way through chemo was my low white blood cell count.  Very low counts are a worry as it makes you vulnerable to infection which can be serious, though luckily I avoided getting sick.  But it can also mean that you have to postpone chemo for a week to allow your body to recover.  This can be terribly frustrating as it makes it difficult to plan - suddenly holidays have to be cancelled, arrangements rearranged, all to accommodate a new schedule.  This was perhaps the biggest lesson of chemo for me, that things don't always go to plan and you just have to be very flexible.

The biggest change of plan came at the end of FEC when I should have moved onto three-weekly Taxotere.  My white blood cell count was, however, too low to tolerate Taxotere and my only option was to take Taxol instead.  Unlike FEC and Taxotere, Taxol is administered every week.  So suddenly I was faced with nine weeks of hospital visits every single week. This is when chemo really did start to take over my life, just because it took so much of my time.  It was no longer possible to go away over Christmas and New Year and I had to give up my voluntary job.  On the other hand, I have heard that Taxotere can be quite severe and Taxol was not so tough.  So perhaps it was a good thing in the end.

And at least Taxol is much quicker to administer than FEC - on a good day I could be done in 2-2.5 hours.  And I had no problem with my appetite on Taxol - the weight I lost on FEC soon went back on!

In the beginning, Taxol was reasonably easy.  I started with flaming red cheeks for a day which gave the weird feeling that I was constantly embarrassed about something.

Hot flashes caused some problems sleeping (duvet off...duvet on...duvet off...) but on the whole I found that the pounding head and twitchiness was much better than on FEC (despite still having to take Medrol, go figure).

Leg, chest and arm aches worked their way through from about day three to six, for the first few weeks this was no worse than as if I'd done an over strenuous work out.

I had some tingling in fingers and toes but luckily this never progressed to significant numbness. 

I found myself getting short of breath, sometimes with chest pain. This developed into an intermittent cough which was apparently due to fluid retention in the lungs.

Low white blood cell counts continued to be a problem.  Once I was neutropenic (extremely low count) but I carried on as normal including spending an evening in a theatre watching my son perform in concert while people coughed and sneezed around me (I figured that nothing could be worse than going up and down in a crowded hospital lift so why not?).  Fortunately I stayed well (lots of anti-bacterial hand gel).  But I did have to have a course of 5 Neupogen shots on two occasions to get my count up and once chemo was delayed by a week again.  The Neupogen caused me one day of severe bone pains...but these promptly vanished again.

Oddly enough my hair started to grow back on Taxol, now I have a few millimetres soft fuzz on my head.  But my eyebrows and eyelashes survived FEC only to start to fall on Taxol and are both very patchy now that I am at the end.

My nails became discoloured but never flaked or came off - I wore nail varnish all the way through as advised so perhaps this helped.

They do say that Taxol is cumulative, however, and I have to admit noticing a decided turn for the worse in the last three sessions.  The aches in muscles and bones became bad enough to keep me awake at night and I started taking paracetamol before bed.  Combined with increasing hot flashes and endless irritating itching around the vagina (caused by dryness), insomnia became a problem again.  The symptoms started to last for longer until I would start the next cycle still feeling achy from the previous cycle.  By the very end, I felt weak in my arms and legs and struggled to make it all the way up the stairs without pausing for breath.  But at least by this point I knew it was nearly over.

All the way through, I have tried to eat healthily, exercise, drink lots of water and avoid caffeine and alcohol.  I think it helped. 

If you're starting down the chemo road, take heart.  There's no denying that it's a long haul and there will be some downs along the way.   But life carries on...just make sure you celebrate every stage of the way.  

Running the last chemo mile

I confess to starting yesterday in tears, though I finished it in smiles.

Yesterday was Back to School Day so at 7am I was dragging myself out of bed feeling rotten after yet another sleepless night and making the kids breakfasts in a puddle of self-pitying tears.  How can I describe how I feel at the moment?  The worst of the weekly muscle aches and stabbing pains worked themselves out over the weekend but I still have various niggles including a return of mouth ulcers and an embarrassing itch which is bad enough to give me sleepless nights.  But overall I just feel....weak.  I have wobbly legs and no strength in my arms.  Halfway up the stairs I have to rest, gasping for breath.  It is as if I am getting over a horrible bout of flu that has sucked my strength away.  You might even have thought I did have flu over the weekend as I was coughing all the time, but apparently that's just fluid on the lungs...

Anyway, yesterday I got the kids off to school and headed up to the hospital for my weekly blood test: another bruise to add to the collection up and down my forearm.

The good news is that this should be the very last week of chemo.  The end of my five-month FEC-Taxol chemo marathon is in sight!  But last week my white blood cell count spectacularly crashed again so the doctor warned that I was unlikely to be able to go ahead with chemo this week.  Another delay, another week of chemo dragging on.  Not a big deal perhaps, but every extra mile at the end of a marathon seems a long way.  And to make it worse, the chemo that should have been finished by Christmas looked as if it would drag on into a celebratory weekend with a friend visiting from the States after all - bummer.

At the hospital, things were busy with post festive-season appointments and we had to wait an hour and a half in the dismal waiting room to see the doctor.  I started on conspiracy theories.  She must be consulting my oncologist about my white blood cell problem. What would he recommend?  Would I have to do yet another course of the dreaded Neupogen shots before I could progress to the last chemo session?

Finally I was shown in.  My doctor smiled.  She can't explain why, but  my crazy white blood cell count has gone back up again by itself despite last week's Taxol.  Still low - but high enough to go ahead with chemo. 

So today I arrived at hospital and followed the 'Route 42' signs to the chemo ward for the very last time(as one of my visitors said, it sounds like directions to a motorway).  I nipped down the short-cut tunnel that I only found because a friend tipped me off and straight to the bank of lifts that took me several visits to work out how to operate.  How well I know how it all works now!  Was there a trace of nostalgia as I effortlessly found my way to level 4, watching the newbies bewilderment as they tried to figure out the system?  Well, maybe just a bit. 

But three hours later I walked out, a little slow and weak, with one, big, happy smile on my face.


I feel like a marathon runner who has suddenly realised that the finishing line is a mile closer than expected.  There's still a bit to run but my flagging footsteps have gained a bit of extra bounce. 

Staggering towards the chemo finish line

I'm in bed and I'm cold, cuddling the hot water bottle I made to soothe my muscles aches and the spasms in my joints.  The next moment, heat creeps across my scalp and I'm pulling off my night cap (very unflattering but bald heads do get jolly cold) and throwing off the duvet, expelling the hot water bottle from the bed.  The heat radiates down my body and dissipates: hot flash over, I'm freezing again.  My night cap has vanished and my hot water bottle is sulking under the bed and the duvet resists my feeble tug. 

No wonder I'm tired in the mornings.

Tired, achy all over, numb at the tops of my fingers and worrying about the brownness of my nails (but no flaking yet) and itchy in places I really don't want to describe in detail.  And so, so very glad that it's nearly all over. 

My doctor is glad too: my white blood cells are low yet again this despite my post-Neupogen peak last week.  My bone marrow is 'sensitive', apparently and she doesn't think I could do much more.  But I got the green light for the eighth of my nine weekly Taxol today so next week will the last....if my white blood cells hold up.

On a more positive note though, I had imagined that I might be languishing in bed by this stage of chemo and I am most definitely not that bad.  We had to stay home this Christmas due to the weekly treatments but we've still been out and about on day trips and I've coped fine - with a more restful day in between anyway.  My appetite is positively good now (unlike on FEC) so I've enjoyed all the festive fare, though a weekly weighing does have the disadvantage that I now know exactly how much I put on over Christmas...oops.

Chemo has definitely been tough but nothing like as bad as I had feared.

So all in all, I might be staggering towards the finish line -  but at least I'm still getting there on my own two feet.

A Christmas Gift

It's Christmas week, the festive lights are twinkling, there are presents under the tree ...and Santa delivered an early Christmas gift. 

Last week those pesky white blood cells were low again so my doctor prescribed another five day course of Neupogen to stimulate the bone marrow alongside my usual weekly course of Taxol.

So my handy husband has been 'nurse' again, administering the injections in my festively bulging belly, and I have endured a week of Taxol muscle aches plus Neupogen bone pains.  It's been tough, especially during long, painful, sleepless nights.  But it was worth it.

Today I got just what I wanted for Christmas: my blood test result was NORMAL.  That's the first time since I started chemo in August.  And as a bonus gift, my blood pressure (normally very low) was also normal (clearly due to my excellent efforts to increase my salt intake as instructed.  More crisps, please!).

As the pains wear off, I'm feeling good.  It probably won't last too long as I will have chemo again tomorrow but hey, I'm going to enjoy this Christmas bonus as long as I can!

I'm grateful to be in such good shape so near to the end of chemo.  I had never expected to feel such vitality at this point, even if it is just a brief window.  My body seems to be determined to bounce back; I even have a fresh crop of fuzz growing on my baldie head.

Yah-boo cancer - you can get this babe down but you can't keep her there.

Happy Christmas everyone!

I Don't Want to Slow Down!

 "I can't do anything!"

My cry of frustration came at my hospital exercise class.  I was on the exercise bike, pedalling ridiculously slowly, and my heart rate monitor was already beeping warningly.

"You need to slow down," the physio told me reprovingly, seeing my heart rate zoom well over my 'safe' range'.

"But I am going slow!" I wailed.

She looked more closely and asked, "When did you last have chemo?"

The truth is that weekly Taxol provides no opportunity to take a break on chemo days or you'd never do anything at all.

I shrugged sheepishly and confessed, "This morning."

"There you go then," she said with an exasperated sigh.  "Slow down!"

But I don't want to slow down.  I have two primary-aged children who are full of primary-aged energy and want me alongside them.  It's almost Christmas and I want it to be a 'normal' Christmas.  I want to help at my daughter's school Christmas party while she is still young enough to want me there.  I want to make mince pies like every other year.  I want to have a fun school holiday.

So the first day of the school holidays I plan to take the kids for a long promised trip to the ice rink.  I ask a good friend if she and her kids would like to come with us.

"Are you sure it's a good idea?" she asks me.  She knows I had chemo the day before and I'm now also on a course of Neupogen shots because I'm heading towards neutropenia again.  She knows that I did help out at my daughter's party and went to my husband's office party... and that I'm utterly exhausted.  "You're tired and it'll be cold, not good for aches and pains."

But I am determined so she agrees to come along.  It's utter chaos when we get there: everyone else had the same idea and the ice is packed.  It's exhausting just getting through the crowds to get our skates and the noise is unbelievable but soon I'm on the ice with the kids and having a great time.  We hold hands and go in a long line together.  We go one behind each other and make a train.  We do loops and try to go backwards and soon they want to play tag like we usually do.

But all of sudden I have a problem.  I can't see.  This isn't a new chemo side effect, it's an old friend come to visit, one I haven't had for a long time but I know all too well.  There are flashing lights in front of my eyes and I have a migraine coming on.

I stagger off the ice and thank my lucky stars that my friend came with us: she finds me paracetamol and water (I don't even have any pain killers on me, how stupid is that when I should at least have been expecting bone and muscle aches?  I am living in denial of my sick person status perhaps).  I breathe deeply and find that eases the problem, perhaps it was just over-exertion after all. 

I feel better and offer to take all the kids home to my place.  Gently but firmly my friend insists that they are all going back to her house.  On the one condition that I go home and sleep.  I protest but not too vigorously and when I get home I realise that she is right.   I fall straight into bed and sleep for two hours straight.

When she brings back the kids she says, "You need to slow down."

Well, maybe.  I'm certainly glad that I didn't take the kids ice skating on my own as originally planned.  But I'm also super glad that I made it on the ice with them and had some fun, for a while at least.  So, what's the moral I am taking from this story?  Life doesn't have to completely stop while you do chemo - if you feel well enough then you should keep doing as much as you can.

Just take a friend to make you slow down when you are doing too much.

Everything comes in twos

Sometimes nurses are like buses: you wait and wait and finally two arrive at once.

I arrive on time for chemo and am duly assigned a bed, where I organise myself comfortably as usual with my book, phone, headphones, water and snacks on the table and (of course) my woolly socks on my feet.  I start a book and wait....and wait.  It is a whole hour before two nurses bustle in at once, full of apologies - they both laugh to see the other and one stays to insert the IV while the other bustles off to the many other jobs that need doing. 

Pre-Christmas isn't the best time to be fitting in weekly chemo sessions apparently, everyone is trying to pack in appointments before the festive season arrives so the nurses are rushed off their feet.  The two December general strike days we had here in Brussels haven't helped either; the hospital did its best to  carry on serving but it wasn't easy for staff or patients to get there with no public transport and blockages on the roads.  (I was lucky enough not to have treatments planned for the strike days though I did have to go for a blood test on the day of the police protest.  This one took the form of stopping every car to check papers and do breathalysers and generally slow the traffic down.  Bonne fete everyone!  I managed to outfox them though by taking a winding back route, hunched over my sat nav and swearing at it every time it tried to direct me back onto the highway.  It all adds zest to my routine, I guess).  I hope we only have two strikes though I suspect that Belgian militant tendencies combined with austerity measures mean that we are in for some more.  The kids will be thrilled - the schools close on strike days as well.

Today my theme of twos carries on when my doctor makes an unusual appearance by my bedside.  My white blood cells have plummeted from last week's glorious high and are low again, not too low for chemo today but low enough that the doctor doubts that I will be able to go ahead next week without intervention.  So I will have a course of Neupogen alongside the chemo this week.  Two treatments at once equals Taxol muscle aches plus Neupogen bone pains for five days, yippee!  Still, I hope that this will be enough to get me through the last three weeks of Taxol.  Wait, did I just say last three weeks?  Yes, the end is in sight!

The approaching end of chemo means that we need to start planning for the start of radiotherapy and the doctor's visit is followed by one from my lovely cancer nurse on that subject.  But she brings bad news: the radiotherapy unit in St Luc's is closed for the next six months for work.  So she suggests that I go to the hospital at Botanique instead.  Botanique!!  It's right in the centre of Brussels so driving would be a pretty awful idea.  Getting there on the metro is easy...but not quick.  That wouldn't matter for an appointment now and then, or even once a week, but radio will be every single day for six weeks.  Luckily, my theme of twos stands me in good stead because when she sees the dismay on my face she has a second suggestion.  St Elizabeth in Uccle -which is actually not much further than my current drive, though I don't even want to think about the traffic to get across town in that direction.  But these long, six months have taught me that I just have to be flexible and get through it somehow.  Six weeks will, at least, seem short after five months of chemo.

My head is reeling with all this information as the one remaining nurse finishes setting up the Taxol.  Two minutes after she departs - the machine starts beeping.  It's stuck again.  I ring but no-one comes.  On these busy pre-holiday days it seems, you either get two nurses or none at all.

Taxol Intensifying

The last few days I have been feeling rather sorry for myself.  I am so tired, I feel like a yawn machine.  I'm at the end of my weekly Taxol cycle but I'm still miserably achy and the hot flashes continue so I haven't had a good night's sleep all week.  And now I am dizzy, breathless and my chest feels tight...could I be coming down with the dreaded cough that is working its way through the school?

To be honest, the truth is that I've let it get me down.  I've convinced myself that the reason I feel so rotten is because my white blood cell count is down again and I've talked myself into a depression because more delays will mean that chemo will drag on well into the new year.  

The road ahead was starting to look long indeed.

But it seems that my little white blood cells are determined to catch me out.  My blood test this morning showed that they have zoomed up to their highest level since starting Taxol - a wonderful 3000!  So I will be able to go ahead with my fifth Taxol tomorrow, taking me over the magic half way mark.

Apparently my breathless and tight chest is due to water retention on the lungs, a normal side effect, and not an infection at all.  The dizziness is due to low blood pressure so I need to eat salt and sit with my feet up while wearing support stockings.  (What a sight I will look, watching TV in the evening with my headscarf, bags under my eyes, flat chest, feet up and sexy support stockings....munching on a salty bag of crisps!)

So I'm still achy.  And tired. And yet I feel so much better than I did this morning, just because I know I can go ahead this week, and probably next week too.  Taxol may be intensifying its relentless, weekly pressure but I can cope if the end is still in sight.  

Hold on little white blood cells, we're nearly there. 

A third of the way through Taxol...and severely neutropenic

I'm on a downer today.

I feel as if I've done the tearful drive home from the hospital too many times.  And it always seems to be raining...  I went for my routine blood test this morning and my white blood cell count is super low;  severely neutroprenic at only 200.  So there's no question of having my weekly Taxol tomorrow and instead I need to have five once-a-day injections of Neupogen to boost my bone marrow.

It's not a big deal.  I guess I'm just not very good at coping with changes of plan.  It's another week's delay, so  it looks as if I'll be on chemo into the new year.  That's a bummer when I'd hoped to be done before Christmas.

And I'm a bit scared of this injection as I've read reports of people suffering severe bone pains - oh, I so shouldn't have Googled! 

On a more positive note, I've been coping well with Taxol.  The worst thing has been the lack of sleep: first of all I'm steroid-jittery for a couple of nights.  Then come the hot flashes that have me throwing off the duvet one minute, then pulling it back on when I'm all shivery again the next minute.  Then come the muscle aches. 

But none of the symptoms have been too severe.  I've been able to get on with life as usual, with just the occasional afternoon nap (though I did fall asleep in front of the computer once and woke up dribbling on the keyboard...). 

And I haven't been on a downward slope in quite the way I expected when they told me the symptoms were 'cumulative'.  Week two was my toughest so far with painful aches and lots of tingling in finger and toes.  Here we go, I thought.  Already this bad and still seven sessions ahead of me...  But Week Three has gone rather well with barely a tingle in my toes.  Perhaps my lovely friends who took me on a spa day made all the difference.  That sounds like a splendid excuse for a weekly spa date.

So it's only those pesky white blood cells causing the problem and there's not a lot I can do about that.  I just need to pull myself together and be grateful that it's not been worse.  And now I have tomorrow morning unexpectedly free.  Hmmm, perhaps I could fit in another spa?

A Good First Week on Taxol

I can't believe how good I feel today.

Not just 'coping with everything well' but actually bouncingly, energetically, happy good.

It's easy to only post when problems surface so today I wanted to take a moment to remember that there are good days too: days like today when I was up early despite being home late last night after seeing Peter Gabriel live, saw friends, exercised and still feel full of fizz. 

Not bad for someone more than half way through their chemo.

Last week I started the first of nine weekly doses of Taxol - having been advised that my white blood cell count was too low to allow me to have Taxotere once every three weeks as planned.

I wasn't pleased to be faced with having chemo every single week but the first week of Taxol has gone pretty well.  I was surprised to suffer from mild, morning nausea the first few days as I didn't have any nausea with FEC but I guess that's the way it goes.  I was even more surprised to find my cheeks were burning all day the day after chemo but a quick Google confirmed that it's a reasonably common side effect (and not really a problem if you can ignore the sneaking suspicion that you've done something really embarrassing to merit your flaming cheeks).  And then the hot flashes in the night had me repeatedly throwing off the duvet and then pulling it back on as I froze five minutes later...just as well I've already opted to vacate the marital bed during chemo or I'd have driven my husband mad.

I had anticipated the aches in my legs and chest from day three, but they were no worse than the ache you feel after an over strenuous work out.  And finally, my fingers and toes started tingling which suggests that neuropathy (numb fingers and toes) will follow in later sessions. 

But, so far, nothing to stop me doing what I'd planned for a busy week.  So, overall, I think I'm glad to have escaped the 'Taxotere truck' as I've heard others describe the onslaught of Taxotere symptoms.  Of course, symptoms are cumulative and I have 8 sessions to go... but I'm taking one step at a time.

The best news came this morning when I went for my blood tests.  Last week, my white blood cell count was 1,100  - marginal even for Taxol (and too low for Taxotere), so I was sure that it would be lower still this week as there hadn't been much time for my body to recover from the last dose.  But it has actually doubled to 2,200!  It's still half a 'normal' white blood cell count which should be 4,500 but quite high enough to allow me to have my second dose of Taxol tomorrow.

One down, eight to go. 

So far so good.

Taxol vs Taxotere

This morning I wrote about my nervousness as I faced the Terrors of Taxotere.

Only it turns out that I'm not.

I went in for my blood test this morning and apparently my bone marrow is struggling to cope.  My white blood cell count is low again  - too low to start on Taxotere tomorrow as planned.

I could just wait a week as I did last time but the doctor warned me that this is likely to be a recurring problem.  Too many delayed weeks could make the chemo less effective, never mind the fact that it would drag on forever.

So, the alternative?  Taxol.  Less severe on the white blood cells so I can start tomorrow as planned.

And the catch?  Taxol is administered weekly.  So instead of three more rounds of chemo with one every three weeks, I'm now facing nine rounds of chemo with one every week including both weeks of the kids' Christmas holidays.  I am really not feeling happy about that.

Still, if I try and focus on the big picture, the good news is that Taxol seems to be at least as effective as Taxotere.  Some studies suggest that weekly Taxol may even be more effective.  As for side effects, it's the same class of drug so the type of side effects are the same: muscle and bone pain, numbness in hands and feet (neuropathy), diarrhoea, nausea, possible loss of finger and toe nails.

My doctor assured me that side effects tend to be less severe on weekly Taxol than with the larger dose of Taxotere every three weeks.  A quick trawl of cancer blogs and discussion groups show a more complex picture with some women complaining of worse symptoms with Taxol, especially for neuropathy.

Perhaps the moral is that I should listen to the doctor and not frighten myself with Google searches....  Because the bottom line is the same: everyone is different and no-one knows how I will react until I try it. As with so many things in this field, it's a confusing and complex picture and there are no straightforward answers. 

The only thing I know for sure is that I will now be spending a lot more time at hospital.

I'd better go and buy some good books.