I’m officially a PhD! Well…okay…maybe not a real doctor…but my last chemo treatment was a one-day treatment consisting of Perjeta + Herceptin + Docetaxel, so I kinda feel that I have earned a PhD 😉  In any case, Round 5 is done. In the bag. Finito. And I’m pretty happy about that. This means that I have only two rounds to go. Even better is that the next treatment, Round 6 (less than two weeks away) is the very last one that will contain the Docetaxel (D). I don’t like this drug for a number of reasons.

The first reason I don’t like it is demonstrated in the photo below. Yes, those are bags of ice on my hands and feet. The ice sucks. I sit like that for over an hour. So that’s the first reason I don’t like the D. (That’s my favourite chemo nurse in the photo. She was assigned to me for my third treatment and now I request her each time I go in to PMH for a treatment. She’s amazing.)

Now back to reasons I really don’t like the D. The second reason is that two days after treatment, i.e., when the steroids wear off, the D makes me feel like absolute crap. The D is responsible for the severe muscle and joint aches that I experience after this treatment. I basically feel like I’ve been run over by a Mack truck. And then the truck backed up and ran me over again. I don’t even know how else to explain it.

The third reason for not liking the D is that it keeps sending me to the Emergency Department at the Oakville hospital! I’ve experienced a pretty high fever around the fourth day after each of the two treatments that include D. Having a fever means that I could be fighting an infection, and an infection for me could be deadly. I’m not using the term “deadly” lightly. Having an infection during chemo is life-threatening. Yes, I mean death. A chemo patient who contracts an infection could die if the infection is not treated immediately. So when you get a fever, you don’t just take Tylenol and go to bed. Needless to say, this past Monday I had another fever that once again sent me to Emerg. The good news is that my blood work came back quickly and it showed no signs of infection, so I didn’t even have to stay overnight this time! This is now the second D treatment in a row where the D combined with the Neulasta (the immune booster) has made my body believe that it’s fighting an infection and has caused what is known as a “false fever”. Unfortunately, the only way to determine if my fever is false or not is to have blood work done. I’m now a regular at my local Emergency department…and I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be there again two weeks from now after my next D treatment!

And if these three reasons weren’t enough to dislike the D, there is more. It takes me a lot longer to recover from these treatments. It takes me about two full days longer to feel human again than it did during the first half of the chemo treatments. This tends to wear on me mentally…which then makes me cranky. Cranky Jane is not a fun person! Then there is the aspect of the other side-effects from the D: the dry and itchy skin especially in and around my nose, the mouth sores, the swollen tongue that feels twice it’s normal size (this makes eating and drinking uncomfortable…and changes the taste of everything!)…and yes, I am working this week with all of these symptoms! None of it really hurts, it’s all just uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. However, by the end of this weekend most of this should have disappeared and I should feel a bit more normal for the period leading up to Round 6. This will be very last treatment that includes Docetaxel and despite all of this, I’m looking forward to it!