Drug Wars

What have I been up to?

Well, I planted flowers, read a book or two, and changed the drugs for my treatment.

I was having a lot of leg pain, and it was not getting better. Despite my doctor’s assurances that it was the taxol (chemo drug) that caused the pain, and it would gradually get better, it was getting worse.

I decided one day that I had never had a break from the other two drugs, but have had them every three weeks consistently. I opted to miss a treatment in order to see what happened. After that six week hiatus my legs felt a ton better. I could stand and wash dishes, cook meals, go shopping, and do all sorts of things that I could not do before the break.

Armed with this information, and after much discussion, the doctor changed my next infusion to only Herceptin so we could follow its progress. Result: leg pain and feet tingling mid-infusion, legs feeling like lead the next morning, and intense leg pain for about two weeks.

Three weeks later, after fending off defensive nurses who said, “I've never heard of Herceptin having side effects like that!” or “Herceptin usually doesn't cause leg pain,” we tried just doing an infusion of Pertuzumab. Result: my legs feel fine. My muscles are a bit sour, as is a noted side effect of the drug.

So I’ll go on enjoying my flowers, reading a new book, and not worry anymore about leg pain.