I've now gotten through dose #7, so more than halfway done! My side effects haven't changed much EXCEPT that I finally did start getting fatigue after this round. My disconnect day is Sunday and I felt super tired starting in the afternoons Monday and Tuesday (last week). I took 1.5 to 2-hour naps in the late afternoon those days, which I never do, and then I went to bed early and slept for another 10 hours or so (also uncharacteristically long for me). Wednesday I went to work late (headache from the Neulasta shot I give myself Tuesdays) and had no trouble with fatigue; in fact I had a faculty meeting that afternoon and spent 2 hours after I went to bed arguing with someone in my head, only got about 5 hours of sleep, but still felt fine the next morning rather than exhausted.
I am successfully managing my harder, more uncomfortable stools during and right after chemo with Colace by starting to use it sooner. I'm only using 1-2 of them per day, but I think they are helping. I also have a bidet seat on the toilet now, which helps make the cleanup less irritating.
No neuropathy yet, thank goodness. My appetite is still lousy until about Wednesday, but that's been the case all along. Mostly because I get icky drainage that tastes weird in the back of my throat during and right after Chemo. I can manage to drink water just fine but it's hard for me to eat a full meal. Snacking a lot (which I normally don't do; I'm having to train myself) on the low-appetite days does seem to help me eat more over the course of the day.
Also my husband (who does all of the cooking but doesn't make desserts) found unenriched all purpose flour and pastry flour at the grocery store, so I baked a chocolate orange cake from scratch over the weekend and took that over to friends when we got together to play board games. The cake was a hit and now I can eat what's left without worrying about any added folic acid.
The cake doesn't have any frosting or icing so it's not a huge amount of sugar, either.
So overall I'm still handling the chemo pretty well. No hair loss still. 7 down, 5 more to go!
DX: sigmoid colon cancer 5/2018. 48 F
laparoscopic sigmoid resection (24 cm removed); no stoma.
7.5cm adenocarcinoma -- mod. diff.
1 noncontiguous tumor deposit removed; 0/31 lymph nodes
T3 pN1c M0
5/18 before surgery, CEA 11.2
6/18 began FOLFOX
7/18: CEA 1.9; added neulasta post infusion
9/18: CEA 2.8
10/18: 25% chemo reduction
11/18: CEA 1.8
7/19 CT scan clear