I am on my 3rd round of taxotere

[Scootman]

I am on the 3rd round of taxotere and I am to the point that there is no relief between the treatments. It has pretty much incapacitated me because of the pain and body aches. The only time I get relief is when I start the the steroids again..... Was advised to just take advil and tylenol alternately. Two questions I have are is that I have been taking so much tylenol would that cause a slight increase in alk photophase or does that fluctuate naturally . Secondly it was mentioned that the amount of taxotere could be reduced. Has anyone had a treatment not the maximum dose and still had success. Thanks

[Tall_Allen]

To my knowledge, taxotere is ALWAYS given with corticosteroids (5 mg prednisone twice daily). It was tested that way. Why is your doctor not following the standard protocol? I think you will feel a lot better to take it with prednisone.

[Hidden]

When I went through Taxotere infusions I always took Prednisone.

[tango65]

These articles have info related to your questions:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/232...

acsjournals.onlinelibrary.w...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/232...

[joekaty]

Palliative care is NOT hospice and can be started at any time. They are experts in pain management and I would highly recommend you ask for a referral to palliative care, or if that isn’t possible, a pain management doctor. I could not believe the difference in knowledge of pain management between our palliative care doctor and our oncologist for my husband. He suffered unnecessarily many times I now believe due to lack of expertise in pain management medications. Frankly, I don’t know that I’ve met anyone who only used over the counter medications for chemotherapy and cancer pain. I would imagine that would put one at risk for taking too much and especially with Tylenol risking liver damage. In regards to reduced dosage my husband also many times had 50-75% of dosage of chemo (taxotere and others) and did have a reduction in PSA- who knows whether it would have been more at the full dosage but he did receive benefit. Re: alk phos I’ll just throw in that I’ve been super obsessive about following his numbers but other than drastic increases I’ve just noticed that it is a number that fluctuates so unless you’re seeing a persistent continuing pattern over time I wouldn’t obsess over it too much. I’m NOT a medical professional but that’s just been my experience observing his labs over several years and lots of chemo and lots of other treatments. Best of luck to you. Chemo is a beast and the first time my husband had taxotere (9 rounds) it beat him up more than just about anything else but it also saved his life and gave him years he was never “supposed” to have...

[Scootman in reply to joekaty]

Thank you

[Hidden in reply to joekaty]

I’m praying for Joe &Katy 🙏

[j-o-h-n in reply to joekaty]

You're so nice.............

Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.

j-o-h-n Tuesday 03/23/2021 6:33 PM DST

[john205]

Re: Taxotere, I always had a high dose of dexamethasone (similar to prednisone) with my dose of taxotere and my side effects were not terrible and were limited to the middle week of a 3 week cycle. Lower doses of taxotere are an option that was suggested by my oncologist if the side effects were too severe. I did not need to do that but it may be done. Another option may be to spread it out a bit, say 4 weeks instead of 3.

As far as tylenol, it may be toxic to the liver in excess doses, so be careful with that. You should limit it to 2000mg/24 hours (for example 500mg 4 times daily) , and even at that, not every day, especially if you already have a sign of a liver issue, like alk phosphatase elevation. It may vary naturally within normal range but it bears watching. How are your other liver function tests? Ask you doc to order a full set if it has not been done.

[Scootman in reply to john205]

Thanks for your reply I do take the dexamethasone the day before ,day of and day after. That is the best I feel during the whole process. The rest of the time I ache and hurt all over and wonder if these pains and aching is the cancer growing or just the side effects of chemo. It is hard to try and think positive when you feel like you are never going to feel good again. I have been avoiding the tylenol unless I feel really really bad just try and suck it up. Oncologist did prescribe vicodin but it did nothing.

[john205 in reply to Scootman]

Sorry you are having such a hard time. Reactions vary so much for different people. Ask the oncologist about a lower dose of taxotere. It’s not an unreasonable thing to do and it’s commonly done if full dose is not tolerated.

[Scootman]

I plan on talking about that I just do not want to lower the chance of the chemo working.