Switching it up!

The past couple of weeks have been hard on Zoë. She has not been responding to the side effects of her chemotherapy as expected. With Zoë’s chemotherapy we expected some nausea and vomiting the first couple of days after she goes for her treatment. We did not, however, anticipate it continuing all week until the next scheduled treatment. The side effects from her chemo have been difficult to say the least. When she started her treatment she was given Zofran for nausea. This medication usually works great for chemo patients but not for Zoë. Her oncologist, Dr. August, thought switching her to a different anti-nausea regimen would help to curb her nausea and vomiting. We have been giving her three different medications with this new regimen with the hope she would feel better. Needless to say it has not helped. Zoë has lost a little over 5.5 lbs. Although it does not sound like much, it is over 10% of her total body weight. This week we changed up her medications for nausea and vomiting again and Dr. August thought it would be prudent to withhold Carboplatin (one of the two chemo drugs she is given at the hospital). She is scheduled to not have it the next two weeks anyway. Hopefully this break will allow her to feel better and recover some of her lost body weight. In three weeks we will re-introduce Carboplatin. The hope is for the side effects to be less severe when it is resumed. She seems to be feeling slightly better this weekend. We are hopeful her tumor is shrinking as she has made slight progress with the use of her right hand.