tojow2: Can anyone suggest help for my... - The Roy Castle Lu...

The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation

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tojow2

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Can anyone suggest help for my sister please. She has lung cancer and has had 4 cycles of cisplatin/pemetrexed - she is now on maintenance pemetrexed only on a 4 week cycle (4 weeks rather than 3 as she had quite a lot of side effects initially). The first 3 weeks she is not too bad apart from loss of stamina and feeling pretty tired - she seems to control the nausea quite well, however in the final week of the cycle her eyes get infected and very swollen and inflamed and stream with water (they occasionally produce puss as well), her ankles and feet also get swollen and the joints very sore. She's tried 4 types of antibiotic drops for her eyes but they don't seem to make much difference - I suggested she uses the wipes you can buy for Blepharitis and although these help a bit they don't stop the symptoms. It's bad enough having to endure the chemo and all these additional side effects just add to the misery as I'm sure you all know - any suggestions would be very welcome. Although the docs are very helpful they don't seem to have answers for all of these niggling issues.

Thank you

Tojow2

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LorraineDPartnerRoy Castle

Hello Tojow2

Sorry to hear your sister is having such an awful time with her maintenance chemotherapy. I am aware of tiredness and some joint pain as potential side effects but have not previously heard about repeated infections. I will put your questions to some of our nursing/ medical contacts and see if we can gather any useful suggestions for her,

best wishes

Lorraine

on behalf of the Information & Support team

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tojow2 in reply to LorraineD

Thank you that will be much appreciated.

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