The Chemotherapy Survival Guide.
Photo by John Anthony Evans via Flickr (Creative Commons).
Update: I actually posted the wrong start date for this series. It will be July 9, 2009.
Over the past few months, I’ve been asked by more than one friend as to the ways that they can help make chemotherapy a more comfortable experience for their relatives or friends. I thought this would be a great time to post a series specifically dealing with this issue over the next few days. So the next few posts on this website will be sort of a Chemotherapy Survival Guide. I’ll write about some insights I picked up while undergoing four months of intensive chemotherapy myself and some of the pointers that I picked up from discussions with other patients. I’ll start this series July 9, 2009 (expect the first post before noon EDT) and continue on daily (excluding weekends).
Since I write these the same date I post them, if you have any points you’d like me to discuss or have ideas you’d like to share, please do so in the comments. As always, you can subscribe to Helpoon by clicking on subscription options above. This is a Feedburner service powered by Google and at no point is your e-mail shared with anyone else other than Google and Helpoon. It will only be used for the purpose of delivering the e-mail updates to you.
Chemotherapy is a difficult process and I hope I can be very helpful to those that are living or will live through it.
FM
You can also check out this other article, which may help you with chemotherapy:
I have colonrectal cancer and
the only side effects from chemo are
diarrhea,I had a shot that is
supposed to last a month but
it has not been a month and this
terrible diarhhea has returned.
lomotil doesn’t help.
any suggestions??/
Beverly,
You know, as I mentioned on some of the other Chemotherapy Survival Guide posts, what works for a lot of patients often doesn’t work for us, so working around different medicines to discover what may work for us may take some time to get used to. I personally never had a persistent diarrhea problem during chemo, which makes it hard for me to chip in here, but I did forward your question to one of the doctors that help us out here on Helpoon.
In a similar situation, when I was dealing with a heartburn problem from chemo, I went through all the major brands of anti-acid medicines before relative newcomer Kapidex finally solved it for me. I had tried Pepcid AC, Zantac, Prilosec, Protonix (to some success), and more, but Kapidex was able to make me feel like I had a pre-cancer stomach again.
Your best bet is to work with your doctor on different approaches until you find something that works. Rather than going out to buy prescriptions, ask the doctor for medicine samples (when applicable) first so that you can try the medicine and study its usefulness before you buy. Also, a lot of times, medicines that are meant to last one month may not last so long, so discuss with your doctor about how to get around that. One of the anti-nausea medicines I tried for chemo was supposed to last me one month, yet after two weeks it was useless. Medicine parameters are really just set to how they react in the majority of the population, but reality is different for a lot of people.
As soon as I get further info on diarrhea options, I’ll post it here for you. I hope a solution comes through quickly.
Fernando