Many people ask me when I'm going to lose my hair and tell me that they are concerned about being with me if they have a cold. One of the pluses of my chemotherapy for colon cancer is that I have a less than 5% chance of losing my hair and that my immune system is not compromised. In fact, at my first appointment, my oncologist counseled me against shaving off my hair. (Apparently, he had a patient who shaved off her hair because she wanted to be the one to control the loss of her hair - not the cancer. My oncologist then informed her that she wasn't going to lose her hair...)
The side effects that I'm experiencing are the following:
1. Nausea -but it's not so bad with very powerful anti-nausea drugs
2. Fatigue - this is the hardest one on me
3. Neuropathy - basically my fingers and toes feel like they have pins and needles in them (it's the sensation that you get when your arm falls asleep). This is particularly bad in cold weather.
4. Inability to drink anything that is cold - it feels like a knife is slitting my throat. Not a pleasant feeling.
Thus far - my hair seems to be staying in (fortunately, I have a lot of it...).
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