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@leighs2011

Hi good luck to you and your wife. I have just started Gemcitibine and abraxane only and reading about her struggles is worrying me because I'm supposed to go to Hawaii with my son and daughter and grandchildren in July. I have stage 4 after 3 years NED with surgery, 6 months chemo. Cancer is in lungs as well now. My after chemo symptoms are extremely sleepy and tired, weak feeling but no diarrhea yet. I sure can't imagine how much you both have gone through. I had forfirinox before I think with 5FU and oxalyplaten. I got very ill with bronchitis, pneumonia, diarrhea but luckily my daughter is a physician at UCLA (internal medicine and geriatric ) medicine so I didn't have to go to hospital. I will speak to my doctor if I get more sick. Do you know it effects are cumulative? Thanks and Good Luck leigh

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Replies to "Hi good luck to you and your wife. I have just started Gemcitibine and abraxane only..."

Sadly, the effects are cumulative. GA is supposed to be "well tolerated" compared to folfirinox/oxalyplaten. From my perspective, it's largely a matter of how debilitated you get at each step of treatment and how much you rebound before the next treatment. When I wrote the post above, my wife was early in the GAC/GA treatments. Ultimately she had 18 treatments (I don't use cycles because it underplays the amount of chemo and time). What we learned from that experience is push back hard on the oncologist if you're not getting good results on scans and the side effects don't seem worth the results. By my records, my wife should have changed treatment plans after 8 treatments; the next 10 brought no improvements in mets and the side effects brought her to the point of giving up. Good luck and hope you can make your planned travel.