i posted earlier in the thread about my uncle having lung cancer and the docs etc nor being able to do anything,
well my bro was telling they have found two more lumps on his windpipe and thus crushing his windpipe and causing him probs breating now
hospital have decided to give hime a dose of chemo to try n shrink them.
the thing is what can i expect my uncle to be like after first dose, as he keeps saying he wants to do it all on is own he wont even let my da<his brother> take him and bring him back on thursday.
There are (I believe) hundreds of different chemo drugs and combinations, so it's impossible to say what he'll be like for sure. It also has a cumulative effect, so the more you have the more symtoms you'd tend to get.
Hair loss within 4 weeks seems to be the 'norm' if it's going to happen. Common symptoms are extreme tiredness, loss of appetite, hyper-sensitivity to flavours or smells, nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, numbness/tingling in the extremeties and painful hands/arms where the drugs are pumped in if it's IV. Then again, some people report very few symptoms at all. I think it depends on the drug used, the doseage, the health of the person generally etc.
My mum's was on a 3 week cycle i.e. she'd get a dose every 21 days. Her chemo day was Tuesday, so she'd be a bit wobbly Tuesday night, OK Weds and Thurs and go downhill from Friday. Saturday/Sunday was always the worst (days 5 and 6) with Monday slightly better and picking up through to the following Sat/Sun (days 11/12) and then pretty much OK and as normal as you can hope for until the next dose.
One thing to bear in mind, chemo can cause weightloss. If the chemo is weight-based i.e. the doseage depends upon the weight of the patient and quite a lot of weight is lost, make sure they weight you again or, as happened to us, they end up over-dosing you on chemo and that caused the worst few weeks of the entire treatment.
