Zyclara

Hi woolston5506, 

I hope that now you are doing fine and completely healed from Zyclara. My questions are how long did it take for your face to heal? and how is your skin now? 

I feel for you...I only had to apply around my mouth at this time.

As a follow up to my previous entries, I went to the dermatologist (11/8/12) for my check up after using Zyclara. I told her I was only able to do a total of 18 days and planned on starting treatment the end of January for the balance of my 30 days. After checking my upper lip out, she informed me I did not need to continue the treatment!!! Hoorah!!!! I showed her the pictures I had taken of the effects and she informed me I had pretty much the upper end of reaction and she was very pleased with the results.  I will say to be very careful when going out in the sun though as it is very easy to burn on the "new skin", even with temps in the 40's & 50's.  Even while driving on a long trip, I noticed getting red from the sun coming in the car.  Hope everyone gets as good a report as I did when finished with this unpleasant drug. 

My husband is on his second week of his second round of treatment on his face.  He is absolutely miserable.  His nose is swollen to twice its normal size and has huge lesions that are oozing.  He has had severe muscle pain and flu like symptoms.  This time around is much worse than the first time.  He's to hard headed to call his doctor about it.  Should we be worried or is this a normal reaction?

Sounds like it could be a normal reaction but it never hurts to call the doc about it and I would advise doing so. This is not a drug to over do it on, believe me. I also had large lesions that oozed which was very disgusting to me.  I know they say if it gets unbearable or too uncomfortable to stop and take a break. Again though, I would advise calling the doc to confirm he is not having a super severe reaction.....

On Dec 05, 2012 3:31 PM amartin9294 wrote:

My husband is on his second week of his second round of treatment on his face.  He is absolutely miserable.  His nose is swollen to twice its normal size and has huge lesions that are oozing.  He has had severe muscle pain and flu like symptoms.  This time around is much worse than the first time.  He's to hard headed to call his doctor about it.  Should we be worried or is this a normal reaction?

Sounds like his symptoms are typical of a severe reaction to the medicine. Although this is painful and horrible it is a good thing in that he is treating AK’s that could develop into something much worse in later years. Five years ago I had a 4 week treatment of efudex for AK’s on my face and sounds like your husband and I had the same type of reactions….it was horrible!! Today I am finishing the first week of a two week regime of Zyclara and I have only a few lesions with what would be considered a mild reaction. Men can be stubborn but it sounds like his reaction although painful and horrible is within what is to be expected for a moderate to severe reaction to Zyclara. Read the many posts in this forum to get a good picture of the extremes other people have experienced.

I am beginning to question the use of Zyclara when people have these tremendous reactions....

Here is my question:  so what if you treat the AKs on your face.  Don't most of us who have AKs on our face, also have them all over our bodies?  So what is the point in treating the face (Zyclara isn't used all over the whole body, so why wouldn't the AKs on the rest of the body be just as likely to develop into melanomas?)

And speaking of developing into something more serious than an AK--isn't there just a 1% chance any one AK would develop into a full blown skin cancer?   (each and every AK has its own 1/100 chance)

Ignutah....I am not a doctor but my research has yielded the following:

> AK's develop into SCC or BCC and not melanomas. You can have SCC/BCC lesions mechanically removed but using a topical chemo cream to remove AKs is much more painful but depending on the amount of AKs you have much less expensive and more thorough.

>Topical creames such as Zyclara, Efudex etc can be used on other parts to the body besides the face, however truck, legs, hands etc have thicker skin and will take a longer time for the lesions to present themselves. Personally I used the same treatment of on my face and my hands with a severe reaction to my face and almost no reaction on my arms and hands. I would like to find out more information on applying to arms and hands....if anyone has experiene please share. Others on this blog have reported minimal reaction to AKs on these areas.

> Melanomas primarily develop from moles or in my case freckles. What I thought was just a large freckle on my leg turned out to be Stage 0 melanoma. Luckily it was detected and excised at a very early stage with success.

>I never knew my unraised freckle to be considered a mole with potential for melanoma, I kept checking my body for raised moles not freckles. My freckles change color with the season (sun dependent) so I thought nothing of it when one part of the freckle became darker than the rest. Even the dermo did not detect it until I mentioned it to her during one of my routine checkups. The reason I am writing this is to alert unsuspecting red heads to watch their freckles and become concerned when a section of a freckle starts to turn color. Once I knew what to look for all of the warning signs and the ABCDs used for checking moles started to make. sense.

I had no idea at all about AKs only developing into SCCs or BCCs.  Also, I had never really paid attention to freckles that changed color (I am also a redhead) nor has my skin cancer Dr ever looked at or said anything to me about my freckles.  I happen to have just noticed a new, small, dark freckle on the side of my nose that was never there before (most of my freckles are more beige-tan colored, this one is darker brown but very small and the color is consistent across the freckle). 

Do you mean a freckle that is partially the normal freckle color and partially darker is the kind of freckle that causes concern.

Ignutah.....I tried to attached a picture (but not successfully    :( )  of what I thought was my freckle on the top of my thigh about 4 inches from my knee cap. It is not an area that received a lot of sun exposure as a kid. From my research it appears the current medical thinking is AKs are the result of long term sun exposure while melanoma is the result of a few  intense sun exposures....

If you have a freckle that is changing color, larger than 1/4" diameter, etc (ABCD's ) have a Dermo check it out. You can always take digital pictures to record the size and color of the freckle/mole and compare it a few months later to notice any changes.

If I can figure out how to attach a picture to this blog I would be happy to share, or send a private reply with your email.