xeloda

Wow--your last day of treatment, Tina. You must be thrilled.

My mom just completed her 7th day--so, we have a long way to go. She is also taking Zolfren & it has helped her so far. She has had no nausea so far.

Thanks for all your info.  It has really helped.

Good luck, H

To avoid or minimize hand & foot syndrome with Xeloda, take 100 mg of B6 vitamins every day.  This proved so effective in clinical trials that now Roche, the manufacturer, recommends this to physicians and their patients.  I did this for 6 weeks of neoadjuvant treatment & had absolutely no problems with my skin.

I am a rectal cancer survivor and one of the first patients in my city to take Xeloda. I loved it! I never had any severe side effects except diarrhea (and that may have been mostly from the radiation) except it was probably from both because later (after surgery) I took Xeloda again for five months and I did get some diarrhea.  Since the doctors hadn't had much experience, they didn't give me any medication for nausea ahead of time, and guess what, I was never nauseated. I sent on two trips (week-end trips) during my chemo radiation, and as a precaution, my doctors wrote me prescriptions for mediation to reduce nausea, and diarrhea.  Funny thing... I never had side effects bad enough (even the diarrhea) to use ANY of the pills. So you might have your mother avoid lots of medication to cure side effects (like nausea) until she actually GETS the side effect.

I'm anti-lots-of-medication (because every medication has side effects, and I'd sometimes rather have the problem caused by the chemotherapy than additional side effects from medication taken to solve a chemo side effect. (it gets compounded as then one has the original side effect from time to time even the medication 'solves' it... and you nave the additional side effects from the treatment of the original side effect.  It can go on forever until you are taking ten or twelve medications in the end.  I took the chemotherapy, radiation and a little immodium (as little as possible). I felt FINE the whole time except for being more tired than usual, and not having as good an appetite.  But not in pain, or feeling awful. As I look back, I think it was because I took as FEW pills as possible.  Just those necessary to treat the cancer, and when I had severe diarrhea, I took Immodium. That's all...

I never had anything above level 1 hand-foot syndrome, and most of the time I didn't even have that.  I was never nauseated at all, but some food didn't taste good to me so I avoided the foods that didn't appeal to me.

Tomorrow, my mom will begin her 6th week of Xeloda & radiation treatrments for her rectal cancer T2 NO MO.  At 87 years young, she has done extrememly well with very little side effects. We are hoping for positive results. Being new to this whole experience of cancer, what can we expect to happen next in the way of treatments ???

Thanks.