Peripheral neuropathy

[Martin61]

My wife was diagnosed with her2 positive breast cancer last month. She started Chemo last Thursday. The list of potential side-effects is pretty overwhelming, but, above everything, her major concern is peripheral neuropathy. The information provided by the Cancer Council suggest that this is pretty common. It could be tingling in the fingers, but it could be as extreme as not being able to do your buttons up. Last night, my wife got quite upset. She crafts every night for hours, embroidering or making Dorset buttons, all of which are relatively fine work. She said that if she were to lose the ability to do that it would be 10 times worse than losing her hair. I was wondering if anyone had experience with these symptoms and whether you had any suggestions to deal with it.

[sch]

Hi @Martin61 

I'm sorry to hear about your wife's diagnosis.

In my experience, the patient will work closely with the treatment team and they can provide feed back on how you are feeling.

The neuropathy in my case didn't come on all of a sudden, but increased slowly over time.

The important part here is a good dialog and communication with your treatment team.

I am quite some time post treatment (about 6 years), so I can offer you a long term view to this.

I had bowel cancer and received 12 rounds of folfox.

Initially it started as just a tingling in my fingers and a loss of feeling in my hands and feet.  Later in the treatment it would result in pins and needles in the face and sometimes difficulty breathing.

The doctors and nurses will monitor you closely.

As I approached the end of my treatment the peripheral neuropathy got worse.  The doctors decided to stop the Oxaliplatin (the drug that was causing the neuropathy).

I was left with some residual loss of feeling in my hands and feet, that improved over time.

-s