My husband had his first chemo treatment of 275ml Docetaxel (Taxotere) on 1/11/24 at 2 pm.
Thankfully he has had no bad side effects to it except for flatulence.
He has not had to take any pain medication since mid day on 1/11/24. Before that he was having to take Oxycodone 10mg every 4 hours or so
He does have a issue due to being a diabetic keeping his glucose level down. He is learning on how much insulin it takes to lower his glucose, and it has been getting better.
I understand it has only been a little over 2 days since chemo treatment. I am hoping that he will continue not to have bad side effects.
We both were so worried about how bad his side effects would be and other issues.
Has anybody had almost no side effects after this type of chemo treatment? I have researched and cannot find any info.
I wanted to share this info, hoping it will help others.
Thanks to all that have answered my previous post. I greatly appreciated it.
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MsHope
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Good news Ms. Hope! Short answer to your question is ”yes": I also had almost no side effects from Docetaxel, other than being very tired.
I'm also pre-diabetic and have to wrestle with my sugar. I am stage 4 with distant metastases diagnosed almost 2 years ago. It's a year since my chemo six sessions. I did not end up with any neuropathy. And overall my triplet therapy has been successful so far.
May I ask if your husband is being given bags of ice for his feet and his hands to limit the risk of neuropathy? This is a very important question.
Because of the evidence that fasting helps protect the body during chemo and may even possibly enhance the work of chemo against cancer, I also fasted completely (of course one still has to drink water or coffee or tea etc etc) a full one day before and the full one day during. I don't know if your husband is doing this but it's very much worth looking into. There are posts on this site about this but the site search is very difficult to use and I can't find them again - I may even have made one on the question of chemo and fasting.
Your story is very much like my husbands. I suggested the ice to my husband but he declined to use them at this time. Maybe I can convince he for next treatment
To my recollection from reading, up to 30% of people who do the typical six sessions on Docetaxel get some degree of neuropathy - and it may only become apparent in the later sessions. I don't think there's any clinical trials on this though.
By the way if you do it it's easier said than done - you don't want to get frostbite! And the bags of ice I was given were tied up with ice cubes inside which resulted in a lot of air in the bag. And then I realized that the air was insulating my skin from the ice cubes. So I picked a hole in the bag to let the air out. Which enabled me to nicely freeze my hands - and the whole thing was a mess with water everywhere. But it's only an hour or so 😃
Please convince him to ice hands and feet. It really does prevent neuropathy, which is painful and permanent. It also prevents things like nails falling out of nailbeds. Also have him sucking on ice chips - prevents a lot of issues like mouth sores, inability to taste food, etc. The ice treatments limit the amount chemo (which attacks healthy cells as well as cancerous ones) that gets to certain tissues.
Yesterday my husband had his follow-up appointment with Oncologist. I was very alarmed at some of his blood test results. His PSA went up to 1600. Doctor said other blood work was to be expected. I researched surged in PSA and found this, The PSA flare is a well-known phenomenon. I can't believe that his PSA went from 600 to the 1600. Have you heard of anything like this?
Hi Ms. Hope. I can't comment on testosterone flare, specifically how big the flare is. It is a known phenomena (as you have discovered) when ADT injections are started - articles suggest shortly thereafter the PSA will go down again.
Apparently this flare happens when the type of ADT used is a "GnRH agonist", such as Lupron AKA Eligard or other agonists. I didn't see any reference to your husband getting an ADT injection but I'm assuming this is the case. I have no idea if the level of PSA surge you see is typical.
One would think that this would be explained to you as it's fairly standard.
The other standard type of injectable ADT is a "GnRH antagonist", which apparently does not generate a PSA flare. This is the type of injection that I had because I was at high risk of spinal cord damage and they couldn't risk a flare. Despite enticements to switch, for reasons of convenience - ac 90 versus 30 day injection cycle, I have opted to stay with my original ADT for other reasons.
I could be completely wrong about this in which case you should ignore my comments 🙂
Thanks so much for your response. The flare I was talking about it the one after chemo treatment with Docetaxal. I looked further and found this. The postchemotherapy increase in serum PSA could reach more than twice the baseline value. The duration of the PSA surge ranged from 1 to 8 weeks. His PSA went from 600 to 1600. I was just wondering if you had heard of this?
all of my Docetaxal infusions were on Fridays. I felt fine until late Sunday … that’s when the unbelievable fatigue set in and it got worse over the next couple of days. This fatigue kept me knocked down for a week or so. Then gradual improvement intil time for the next infusion. Rinse snd repeat!
Even worse the fatigue was the complete loss of appetite and the loss of usual taste (everything tasted bad).
I was fortunate in that I never had any serious nausea, and virtually no neuropathy.
Clearly, it is reasonable to day that the very same treatment affects each individual differently.
My husband is a diabetic. He has to take Predisone 5mg two times a day. It is causing his blood glucose to go up really high. He is have to check blood glucose several times a day and take extra insulin. That is really the only side effect he has.
Taxotere is a relatively mild chemo drug, which of course doesn’t mean free from side effects. However they are quite,manageable for most. I was a little tired and wanted to eat only homemade pie and ice cream. Maybe a touch of neuropathy, but it went away.
The ice may or may not helps. As with all the treatments, exercise helps reduce side effects more than everything else combined. Great luck to you!
I am glad that your husband is not experiencing negative side effects at this time after his first infusion. My sweetie did use the iced booties (I learned about them here on this site) that use gel inserts that you freeze the day before). We purchased them on Amazon. He used them on his feet, but opted not to use the mittens on his hands. He did not experience any neuropathy during any of his chemo. The only side effect he had was fatigue that began the second day after treatment and lasted a day or two. Hoping all goes well for you and your husband in his future treatments.
My husband had 6 cycles and his only side effect was a bit of tiredness days 3-5 post infusion. Not bad though- he still worked full time. He did use ice cap and booties and didn’t lose his hair or get neuropathy.
I have had 16 Docetaxel infusions over the last 32 months. They usually administer it 3 weeks apart, 6 infusions and then stop for testing. Dexamethosone is a steroid given simultaneously. Some take prednisone if it works……..no pain! In fact, after DEXA I feel better for 12-24 hours than I do at any other time. Works great for me.
Because it is a steroid, they treat it as a drug to be given sparingly. Likely, you will never get it daily even though it does come in tablet form also……hope infusion is all you need.
Yeah Dex is awesome! I had my first infusion at 2:30pm on 1/23/24 and they gave me a 10mg injection of dex 1 hour prior. I felt fantastic until midnight the next day. I wore the cold booties and gloves and fasted 36 hours prior to infusion. I ate a little applesauce during the infusion and ate at midnight that night. On Day 1 after the infusion I had a meal of salmon and broccoli and I felt great and thought to myself this is a breeze. However, Day 2 after the infusion (1/25) I woke to a headache, eye pain, low blood pressure and rapid heart rate and massive fatigue. I was told not to worry unless my heart rate got over 130 and BP dropped under 90/50. I proceeded to eat a steak and had some electrolytes and I felt much better. I will be repeating the same steps for my next infusion! 1 day of side effects I can deal with. PSA before infusion was 4.2. Getting blood drawn next Friday to test levels. Currently also on Lupron and Zytiga with 0.5mg Dex daily.
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