I was planning on sharing how treatment halfway though was going. Unfortunately, i don't think my experience is representative of how it usually goes.
I've have had 1 FOLFOX + 3 FOLFIRINOX and since the second treatment things went off the rails. It started with what looked like an ear infection, bad inflammation of neck lymph nodes.
This is a week after treatment, saw PCP and thought it was some kind of upper respiratory infection. My symptoms were high fever (101F), burning pain in the neck.
No matter, by treatment day, fever was managed with Tylenol, so we went ahead with the 3rd treatment. A week later things went from bad to really bad. The pain in the neck subsided replaced with chest pain, very high heart rate (110 in the morning), fever. The pain in my chest looked like a heart attack. That landed me in the ER then admission to the hospital.
ER doc did a CBC, ordered a culture, CT scan. He was completely mystified by the CT...it showed that my Aorta was inflamed and had thickened.
Fortunately for me, this amazing infectious disease specialist figured out the cause immediately. pegfilgrastim, the WBC booster, goes by neulasta/udenyca etc. was causing the inflammation. And one of the bad side effects is aortitis.
They did a bunch of other tests to be sure. ECho of the heart was clean, culture didn't find a single little bug, so infection was ruled out. I have been prescribed prednisone/lopressor which is heinous with side effects and my 4th treatment was delayed a week. Getting rid of the aortitis is taking some time, the treatment works for the most part but almost a month after the injection i am still struggling with BP and inflammation is still here.
The upside is that my 4th treatment a week late was a breeze. I guess not having high fever and acute chest pain helps!