On 5/1/2008
cecgrove wrote:
Hi Jeff or others who are reading this message,
My husband started his treatment last Friday and took Xeloda at home, which he had taken last year for 4 months with no life-threatening side-effects. This time he reacted with symptoms of heart attack. He was admitted to the hospital and was taken off Xeloda (which is an oral form of 5 FUs essentially). It is supposed to work with Avastin but now the key ingredient of his chemo is gone. Again we are quite shocked the 2nd time in 3 weeks after he found the spread to his lungs, then the inability to cope with the treatment that he could before. I contacted support group and found it really helped. But he refused to get any support and discuss about it. The oncologist sounded very grim discussing with me over the phone. I believe there are other ways out there because he is relatively young and strong. But he did not want me to help him. Any suggestions?
Cecilia
Hi Cecillia,
I was just checking in to see how you husband is doing. I am sad to hear of his bad reaction to the Xeloda. My doctor had to take me off of it too last month because of some back skin infections I was getting while I was taking Vectibix. I am only on the Vectibix now so I hope it will start to work. Should find out next month after they do a CT scan. Has his doctor said anything about Vectibix or Eurbitux? These new drugs fight cancer cells even though it is not chemotherapy. They can do some remarkable things for some people from what I hear. They do have some ugly side effects like acne, rashes and skin probs. But most of these can be countered by medication. Hope this helps. Let me know how things have been going? Hang in there,
Jeff