I finished my 11th and final round of chemo on August 12, 2015. The week prior to that I stopped by to see my oncologist, Dr. Witta, because my feet were so red, swollen, and raw I could barely walk. I was in constant pain. He said it's from the Xeloda and he told me to stop the pills and not to start them again even with my last round of IV chemo. By the way, my last round of chemo was a slightly reduced dose because of how numb my fingers and toes were becoming.
Stopping the Xeloda was wonderful! My feet started healing pretty quickly, and even with that final round of IV chemo they didn't flare up. I've since noticed, though, that sometimes I do get flare-ups of just the redness, which is strange now that I'm completely done with chemo. At the pain is gone. Sometimes my toes get numb and tingly still.
My hands are back to normal. No more swelling, redness, numbness, or peeling skin. And the skin on my feet is back to normal too. I have really soft skin on my feet now. I love it. I've always loved taking good care of my feet, and I hated seeing them so bad.
My hair…I remember when all this began a year ago, Dr. Witta said that I wouldn't lose my hair but that it would get thinner. And it definitely has done that! I hate to complain but I'm gonna say it…I MISS MY HAIR! If you didn't know me you wouldn't notice, but I can really tell that my hair has thinned out. It used to come down past my shoulders, and it still does a little, but it's only some of the layers that are that long. What I mean is, some of my hair on the top layer is long and some is short. Same with the under layers. So it just doesn't look as nice as it used to.
The shortened hair is because my hair had gotten weak and brittle and was breaking so easily. At first I stopped running my fingers through my hair because it was pulling hair out. But then I had to actually stop touching my hair, styling it, and not even putting it up in a pony tail.
My hair got so thin I had to use smaller ponytail holders because there wasn't as much hair to hold up. I read on line some ways to stop further damaging my already-damaged hair, like not to blow dry it anymore and to use different shampoo and conditioner. So I stopped using my regular hair products, bought shampoo and conditioner that has special oils in it (and smells really good too!).
For the past week I've totally changed my hair routine. Now I wash my hair every other day. Gently towel dry. Put in a leave-in conditioner. Then a little moisturizer that's supposed to strengthen the hair and help manage curls. And then I have to just let it dry naturally. I've noticed that in just a week of doing that that my hair isn't falling out as much and I haven't had any breakage. Not blow drying stops the frizziness from all those split ends.
Here's a good photo of my hair from March this year:
And here's a photo from August this year:
During my 10th and 11th rounds of chemo I found a better way to cool my sore, red feet. Instead of soaking in a bucket of cold water I started wearing wet socks. It worked so much better. I'd take a pair of sweat socks and soak them in cold water and squeeze out most of it but leaving them pretty drippy wet. Then just wear my Crocs or water sandals. It kept my feet cool and wet for a long time, and when the socks started to dry, I'd just wet them again.
You wouldn't believe how incredibly good it felt keeping my feet hydrated and cool constantly. The medical term for it is palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia. Some people get it much worse than I did.
It's hard to get a photo that really represents how bad it was but this one shows the outline of the redness and some of the peeling:
There were some times when my feet were extremely red and swollen. Like I said, I didn't have it as bad as some people, but I can't imagine it being more painful than it was when I could barely walk!
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