Hi everyone.
First time posting on this forum.
I am 42 year old South Korean male.
I was diagnosed with colon cancer in the sigmoid colon last year in October and had surgery 3 weeks later.
Final biopsy showed that I was Stage 2.
Oncologist said that chemotherapy was optional at my stage, but I said that I wanted to do it.
I was only told the drug was 5-FU + Leucovorin, so I don't know if this qualifies as FOLFIRI or FOLFOX, or some other terminology.
I was supposed to get 6 rounds of 5 consecutive daily IV push shots, every 4 weeks.
After the first week of shots, I experienced an urge for bowel movements like every 30 minutes for a week, diarrhea, and a lot of canker sores.
Those side effects faded away after about 10 days since the last shot, but then I started experiencing hair loss.
The hair loss was a big surprise since the oncologist had mentioned that this shouldn't happen in most cases.
Before the second round of chemotherapy, oncologist said that my side effects were more severe than the average patient, but not enough to warrant a change in drugs or stopping altogether.
So we decided to reduce the dosage a bit and go on with the second phase.
The oncologist did prescribe me a mouth wash for the canker sores.
After about 4 days after the last shot, I started experiencing abdominal pain, along with the usual urge for bowel movements every 30 minutes and diarrhea.
I didn't get any canker sores.
The abdominal pain grew every day, and after a week since the last shot, my body temperature started exceeding 38 degrees Celcius, at which point the oncologist had warned that I needed to go to the ER to find why I had a fever.
At the ER, I was diagnosed with Ischemic Colitis, which to my best knowledge meant that I had an inflammation in my colon due to reduced blood flow to a certain area.
I was admitted into the hospital for a week, and was given antibiotics, after which I felt much better.
My next oncologist visit is next week on Tuesday, but at this point, I'm pretty scared.
I don't know whether I should be continuing this chemotherapy, which was optional from the beginning.
I don't know whether I have the courage or strength to go through the remaining four rounds.
I'm thinking of asking my oncologist whether I could change the chemo drug to something else that has less side effects, or maybe reduce the dosage even further down, or whether I should stop the chemotherapy altogether.
So I guess my question is, has anyone experienced side effects similar to me?
What did you do, or what would you do in my situation?
Thanks a lot to everyone who has read my story and thanks in advance for all of your opinions.