Nerve Damage

Does it ever go away?

 

Depending on what type of damage and how severe, but in some cases yes.

 

how is your health?

 

I still have nerve damage in my hands and feet from chemo and it's been a year and 3 months. They told me it would be gone after a couple of months. It feels like my hands and feet are constantly numb or in pain or on fire. It's not as bad as it used to be but it's still hard to write, shuffle papers, and I can't go barefooted hardly at all. I'm on a large dose of neurontin which kind of controls it but I'm just wondering if it will last forever.

 

Health is great except for my hands and feet - or that's what they tell me.

 

thats good.

how do they administer chemo? IV, laser, radiation waves?

seroiusly. i have no idea.

 

Chemo is over for good. It was a combination of IV and pills. The IV drug oxaliplatin caused the nerve damage.

 

Silver, if I remember right, you said that the drug they gave you that caused the neuropathy was 'experimental.' With any experimental drug, you can basically toss the rules of norms out the window. Taking care of yourself and the Neurontin will help the odds of nerve regeneration, but again- with experimental drugs you never know.

 

Well according to my doctor, it is now the standard treatment along with Xeloda, for people who have non-metastatic disease, in other words, adjuvant (preventive) chemotherapy. It is not to destroy cancer cells, but to prevent recurrence. Treatment is usually 70-80 percent effective, meaning that 70-80% of people that were originally diagnosed with colon cancer and have this treatment will have no recurrence. Monitoring period is 5 years from the date of end of chemotherapy

However, I was also told that the neuropathy would go away once my treatments were over, which has not happened. Or, at least it did in other people.

Here are links to the combination of drugs I took and side effects - the side effects are supposed to last only while taking the drugs,usually they subside after treatment is over.

I don't know if these links will work, but the drugs are listed in WebMD if you want to look them up.



http://my.webmd.com/drugs/drug-6402...=Eloxatin+Intravenous^z=1811_00000_0000_dd_04

http://my.webmd.com/drugs/drug-6402...ravenous^z=1811_00000_0000_dd_04&pagenumber=6


http://my.webmd.com/drugs/drug-7906-Xeloda+Oral.aspx?drugid=7906&drugname=Xeloda+Oral

http://my.webmd.com/drugs/drug-7906-Xeloda+Oral.aspx?drugid=7906&drugname=Xeloda+Oral&pagenumber=6

http://www.webmd.com/