Sometimes I would have pain in my body from being in the same positions so much of the time/being inactive. Getting up to move (even very slowly) is important not only for his but also to avoid blood clots or bed sores.
I would easily become lightheaded when I stood up. Get up slowly and have someone or something available for support. Give yourself time to adjust to being upright before trying to move.
My heart rate was unusually high before I started treatment and throughout its entirety. It started to return to normal a few months after I finished chemotherapy.
All of my finger nails and toe nails peeled off due to the chemotherapy (later cycles). They were a bit tender but it didn’t hurt much.
I spent most of my time during treatment lying down so my strength decreased considerably.
I would experience muscle cramps very easily, caused by anything from stretching to taking off my shoes to getting off the couch the wrong way.
After my first cycle, I started breaking out all over my body. A doctor explained that my pores were becoming irritated from the hair follicles dying. I started washing my face (at least twice a day) and body (at least once a day) with a special soap they recommended and it cleared my skin up well.
Because I lost all of my eyebrows and eyelashes, any sweat or lotion or sunscreen would very easily run into my eyes so I would always keep something on me to wipe it away before my eyes got irritated.
I started to lose my hair after my first treatment. At one point I had lost all of the hair all over my body.
This is a common side effect for several of the medications that were part of my treatment.
I had a runny nose almost all of the time and often could not feel that it was dripping until it was too late. In my later cycles I started to have nosebleeds as well.
My body was not able to regulate my temperature well during chemotherapy so I would feel too hot or too cold suddenly much of the time. I would also sweat excessively, both during the day and throughout the night.
Once I was given level 4 R-EPOCH, my cell counts started being affected (I think this can happen at different levels depending on the patient).
WHITE BLOOD CELLS: I would become neutropenic which means my neutrophils (white blood cells that fight infection) were extremely low. The response to this would be to give an injection to help the neutrophils recover but since I had already gotten the Neulasta injection by this time, all we could do on this front was wait for it to kick in. I would always have a fever during this time as well so they did thorough testing for infections since if I had one, my body would not have a way to fight it. They would keep me in the hospital for close monitoring until my neutrophil levels were out of the neutropenic range.
RED BLOOD CELLS: My red blood cell counts were also getting low during this time and the response to this was blood transfusions. They would make sure my red blood cell counts were recovering before they would discharge me from the hospital.
This side effect was by far the most painful part of my chemotherapy treatment (second place goes to the body pain from the Neulasta injection). The mouth sores would flare up when I was neutropenic (so in the middle of cycles 4, 5, and 6) and start to heal in the week before the next treatment. When they were at their worst, I would follow a strict rinse and pain management schedule but would still have to minimize talking/eating/drinking for almost a week. Please be aware of this and plan ahead for it if you are someone who loses their appetite easily. Set up a system for how you can make sure you are getting the nutrients your body needs (cold and bland things worked best for me). I have a strong appetite so I was always able to gain back the weight I had lost before the next treatment. If I had not done that, I am sure that my body would have been a lot weaker, been unhealthily thin, and experienced even more side effects by the end of my chemotherapy treatments.
“*” there is a medication associated with this side effect at the bottom of the “MEDICINES” page