The Evidence Based NP

Overall, my chemo treatment sucked, but not near as bad as I expected. My appetite was poor for the first week after each treatment, but picked back up after the first week. Someone rang the bell while I was getting my first chemo treatment back in October. After my 6 chemo doses, I had a whole new appreciation for that stupid bell.

On a side note…if you ever donate hair for wigs, make sure you are donating to a group that supplies the wigs to cancer patients for free. She told me synthetic long hair rubs on your clothes and can begin to look fake quickly due to fraying at the ends. Being able to just throw on some hair and go has been wonderful and getting dressed up is so much easier with fake hair! I will say the long hair, especially with the cap is really hot, so I don’t recommend wearing a long-haired wig unless it is winter

With the chemotherapy raging through my body, hair loss would begin in 14 to 21 days after my first infusion. On the 17th day after my first chemo dose, I finally decided to shave my head. My sweet neighbors were nice enough to throw a small party for me to complete the head shaving process. My loving and supportive husband could not bring himself to shave my head, so my crazy friend Cheryl offered to get the job done.

The day after my chemo treatment it had officially been 2 days since I had a bowel movement. I lost about 10 lbs in the week after that first chemo treatment due to the diarrhea, but gained about 5 lbs back before the second chemo treatment day. I had severe diarrhea with the second treatment as well, but by the third treatment, things settled down and by the fourth treatment I was having the constipation. In hindsight, my stomach pain was likely due to the side effects of the Taxotere and Cytoxan (chemo) treatments and not the Miralax, but I don’t think I will ever take Miralax again!