Hello Ger73,

I'm sorry to hear about your mum's situation, no wonder this must be a worrying time for you.

Hopefully, some of our members who can relate will soon be along with words of advice and support. Until then you might want to consider ringing one of our cancer nurses if you feel that speaking with someone medically trained might help. They're available on this phone number 0808 800 4040, Monday - Friday between 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Also, I'm including here some information we have on our website about treatment for breast cancer and I hope this can help a little.

Best wishes to you and your mum,

Renata, Cancer Chat Moderator

Hi Ger,

Sorry I missed this at the time but obviously we've talked now on messenger.

I strongly suggest ignoring everyone else's experiences except to take tips for things that did happen to them.  I only say that because (as I think I said in my message) our brains hear the bad stuff about chemo so much that I think they start to expect it and psychosomatically they make us feel ill even when we aren't.  I used mind over matter to test that out on myself and found that a lot of the time I felt much better than my brain seemed to want me to think.

I do think it's important that we have an open mind every day to how we are feeling and let ourselves find out how we really feel as opposed to letting our brain creep other people's experiences into our psyche.

So, as you know, I've been exceptionally well this far and it is possible your mum will be the same.  Some of mine might be prevention though (as I mentioned with taking senna before chemo and then through the first handful of days), drinking LOTS of fluid, and moisturising lots to prevent skin cracks that can lead to infection from your own bacteria and very strictly looking after my dental health.

The one I've been told about today by the oncological nurse is to wear dark nail varnish (and it has to be dark) during all the docetaxel treatment.  They say that the UV getting to the nailbed during this treatment is what can cause the nail to come completely away from the finger.  I haven't looked at the molecular structure of pacataxol in relation to docetaxel but it might be worth asking if it has the same risk and if dark nail varnish is advised.  I know my mum was on FEC-T, her medical team didn't even mention dark nail varnish and she had a lot of problems with her nails.  To my mind it makes sense why the dark nail varnish works so I'm happy with that, even though I've never used nail varnish before and have made a right hash of it :-D

Will speak soon.  Hope your mum is starting to come around to the positive aspect of the hair loss (fast cells stopping dividing and all that).

LJx