Things you wish you had know!

Well...... let me see... there are a bunch of things that are fading in my memory now!

I was treated with FECD, 3 doses of FEC and three of Docetaxal, or whatever its called.

• One weird thing I wasn't warned about was as each FEC dose went in, I lost the ability to focus my eyes. Being stuck in bed without being able to read or watch telly is very dull, but I discovered audio books. There are good recordings of Jane Austen on librivox and since I know the stories backwards, it didn't matter that I kept falling asleep.
• All the way through I kept walking. A bit further every day until I could walk briskly for an hour and then it was time to be squashed flat again.
• I took fish oil and vitamin D throughout because both have been shown to increase the efficacy and reduce the side effects of chemo. Vitamin D in particular has been shown to increase the efficacy of docetaxal. And vitamin D, when given to poor rats who've had chemo, grow their hair back. My hair started growing back half way through treatment, perhaps because my vit D levels were high. Vitamin D also gets ripped up by chemo so its good to keep takling.
• I was terribly worried about the Docetaxal part, nails falling off and terrible wounds on hands and feet, but I had none of that! In the past 20+ years I've always had chillblains in winter so I thought I'd be in trouble but in fact I didn't have a single chilblain of even the ordinary variety. The UK NHS recommends giving up caffeine if you suffer from chilblains. My onc. was very impressed with how well I came through the Docetaxal.
• I also took glutamine to reduce the chance of neuropathy. http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/7/5/1192.full That was disgusting but it had the effect of, well, cloggin me up, so I didn't have bad diahoehrra.

Glad its all over. Hope I never have to do it again!