The effects of chemotherapy treatment for male breast cancer.

Three down and one to go! 

My husband just recently had his third chemotherapy treatment for his male breast cancer and once again no serious ill effects from the treatment.  The drugs that he receives preceding the chemo seem to be doing their job of controlling nausea.  He’s still losing his hair and he does get tired more frequently. 

One of the drugs he takes prior to his chemotherapy and a day after is Dexamethasone.  The only effect he gets from this drug is the hiccups!  He gets the hiccups when he goes from a warm area to a cooler area.  Even if it is just a couple of degrees cooler he starts to hiccup. 

How strange is that?  We talked to the chemo nurse and she said that is typical reaction for Dexamethasone and if it bothers him too much there is a drug that he can take to control his hiccups.

With his prior two chemotherapy treatments he still had an appetite and he gained some weight.  We were told it was the effects of the steroids and that was typical.  However, on this third treatment he seems to have lost some of his appetite.  His taste buds are dull so the food doesn’t taste as good as it did before.  In fact I think he has lost some of the weight he gained.

We are looking forward to the fourth and final chemotherapy treatment.  I won’t say that his chemotherapy treatments were a breeze, because they weren’t.  But we were fortunate that so far his effects from the chemotherapy treatment were minimal and tolerable.

Until later,

Linda

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