Side By Side Effects

Now we get to the real cruelty of cancer. It’s not the cancer that kills you but the side effects of the treatment. Patrick Swayze said something like that last night in his interview with Barbara Walters. He described the excruciating bowel pain that is the side effect of the chemo he was on for pancreatic cancer. Now he’s on a new regimen and he has neuropathy and exhaustion. John and I watched the interview together and both thought, “Hmmm that sounds like our old friend 5-FU”.

But here’s the bitch. John’s chemo is over and he is left with numb hands and feet. He now takes Lyrica to help with the neuropathy but the side effects of the Lyrica are weight gain, dizziness, memory loss and confusion, loss of balance etc. And now I am learning that there are even more complicated side effects when you try to come off of the Lyrica. It’s a pharmaceutical bitch.