Hand Foot Syndrome

Oh the lovely side effects of Xeloda. I had been hoping and assuming that since my experience with the other 3 chemos hadn’t been that bad (granted, I was still miserable, but compared to others, I lucked out) that I would breeze through this one as well with minimum issues and nothing that serious. No such luck this time. 

Xeloda is given in what they call cycles. It’s also one that is used for select cancers. As far as breast cancer goes, Triple Negative is the only one it helps. I’m taking it because even though margins and lymph nodes were clear, there was still some tumor left. That means the ACT didn’t kill all the cancer cells in the tumor, and in case any cancer cells escaped during surgery or traveled somewhere, this will hopefully kill them. You take Xeloda for two weeks, then you’re off for a week to let your body heal. Side effects tend to pile up towards the end of the two weeks on, so that the week off, you may be pretty miserable. My first cycle on it wasn’t too bad. As I was ending the 2 weeks on, I got pretty tired, my hands and feet hurt some, and I had some diarrhea. All VERY common with this chemo drug. It all cleared up in a few days, and I was back to normal. I had plans to start up my Xbox workout. I figured that if I couldn’t walk the treadmill, I could at least workout on my mat and do my Yoga and Cross fit.

Then I started the 2nd cycle. Yes, this statement deserves it’s own special little paragraph.

Cycle 2 did not go as smoothly as the 1st. Within days of starting on the meds, my hands and feet started hurting again. My fingers were swelling, they were turning red, dark red, almost purple, and they were getting warm. By the end of the 2 weeks on the meds, the diarrhea had returned, the surface of my fingers were becoming numb as the outer skin was dying, and the tissue underneath was hot and hurting. I couldn't button my blue jeans, I couldn’t hardly write or pick fuzz off my shirt,, brushing my teeth hurt, using silverware hurt, walking hurt. Anything you can think of that involves using your hands or feet, it hurts. It wasn’t fun. It was annoying. I started developing all sorts of tricks. Use the handle of a knife to seal zip-lock bags, use needle-nose pliers to get into individually packaged pills and peel wrappers off things like yogurt, use a 3rd grader to open a bottle of water, those kinds of things. I was not above asking for help from anyone. My doc and I are still baffled by the fact that I had to stop wearing my fitbit, because even where the wristband set on my wrist, it was doing funky things to my skin. Needless to say, I’ve been using lots of lotion and I’ve used up almost an entire tin of Bag Balm putting it on my hands and feet at night. 

Currently, I’ve taken an extra week off of Xeloda to allow myself to heal and I will be starting back up at a lower dose. So on my second week off the meds, the skin is peeling off my hands like a snake. This isn’t just the one of 2 layers of skin you may lose after a sunburn. I’m pretty sure this is all 7 layers. I can’t open my phone with my fingerprint anymore because I don’t have enough of a fingerprint left after the skin peeled off. Really glad that this wasn’t the year I needed to get a background check for school, lol. I’m constantly peeling skin off my fingers. They feel extra tender, so I still have to use all my opening hacks on bottles and such. Waiting for my feet to start peeling next. I’ll be testing my flexibility when that happens.