This coming Thursday I have my first of 18 injections of Herceptin - these are given every 3 weeks so that's 52 weeks, a whole year - the thought of that is almost as scary as the thought of the chemo was and depending on what you read (as per usual) the side effects are either minimal or horrendous 😱😱😱😱😱 But for my particular HER2+ cancer, Herceptin is the wonder drug - before it was licensed for early stage breast cancer in 2006 the prognosis for HER2+ cancers was the worst around.
Herceptin is an immune targeted therapy, it works by attaching itself to the HER2 receptors on the surface of breast cancer cells and blocking them from receiving growth signals.
One of the major side effects is irreversible damage to the heart, so I'll be having regular ECGs to check how mine is coping (I've had 2 already just to check my heart's OK to even start on it).
It's all rather daunting and I have read that some people choose not to continue with Herceptin as they suffer so much - but as this drug is the sole reason I've had to have the f*cking chemo in the first place (Herceptin isn't given on it's own), I'm jolly well going to do my damnedest to put up with whatever it throws at me 👸 (wonderwoman)
Thursday will be rather a long day as we have to hang around at the hospital for 6 hours whilst I'm monitored, as in rare cases an allergic reaction can happen. The other usual side effects are possible and, as before, I'm aware of them but don't intend to dwell on them 😟😟😟
Then on Friday I have Docetaxel (taxotare) the "big daddy" of chemo - as the nurse giving my first FEC infusion described it as she was injecting with me the "mummy and babies". No, she absolutely should not have said that, but she did and I can't get it from my mind 👿👿👿👿👿👿 Also Onco sanctioned a week's delay in giving me this so that I wouldn't risk missing an important event - her take on Docetaxel (T) is that people who have done well on FEC tend to feel worse on T - well that's me b*ggered then 😭😭😭
So instead of getting myself more and more wound up with the side effects I might get, I've decided to look back and remind myself how well I've actually done (compared to what I feared) with the probable/possible ones for FEC (as listed in the Breast Cancer Care FEC Booklet plus a couple of my own which may or may not be FEC related) .
So, all in all, FEC hasn't been too bad for me 🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
