My mom is a colon cancer survivor. In 2004, she was diagnosed with stage IIIb colon cancer. This meant that she had a large tumor that had broken out of the colon and had invaded some nearby lymph nodes. It also meant that chemotherapy would give her the best chance for survival.
We were scared. Mom is the core of our family. She is the Energizer Bunny. If there was a committee to lead or an event to organize, my mom was there bringing it all together. She had a full-time day job and a variety of on-the-side independent businesses. Her hobbies were quilting, shopping, helping her family, and tending to her beautiful flower garden. After she retired, she executed my idea to start a nonprofit organization for children with special healthcare needs.
How would this high-energy woman, my mom, deal with cancer and chemo, cancer that would make her feel tired, and drugs that could cause peripheral neuropathy?
She managed her cancer treatment just like her life, with stubbornness, tenacity, and a fighting spirit. She decided to take measures into her hands and create a prehabilitation (or “prehab”) plan that included walking and knitting, but not necessarily together.
We talked about her feeling tired, and how research shows that walking can make all the difference. Back then, in 2004, we didn’t know about prehab yet, but mom did. Even before surgery, mom decided to start walking so that she would get used to doing it regularly. She believed that if she could develop this good habit before surgery, she would keep doing it after surgery. It worked well. After surgery and after her chemo started, she was walking every day. Some days, like days 3 to 5 during her chemo cycle, she really didn’t want to walk, but she did it anyway. As I said, she is stubborn.
We had also talked about the type of chemo she would be getting. Mom was lucky to participate in a clinical trial that gave her the opportunity to receive what is now standard treatment for colon cancer. Part of her chemo treatment was the drug Eloxatin (oxaliplatin). A set of side effects that I knew would really affect her life included numbness, burning, tingling, and pain in the fingers and hands (a condition called peripheral neuropathy); a decreased sense of touch; and increased sensitivity to cold.
She got bored with the pink, fuzzy yarn, so she created beautiful caps and scarves from pretty yarns, for fun. But she always came back to the pink, fuzzy yarn scarf when she was feeling down. Maybe a particular cycle of chemo was tough. Maybe she was so tired that she really had to talk her way into moving. Maybe her fingers hurt. With her tenacity she was trying to keep as much of her finger and hand mobility as possible. That’s when she would come back to the pink, fuzzy scarf. The scarf continued to grow by the foot.
When her chemo was done, she joined me on a trip to a conference where I had been invited to speak on cancer and sexual health. When we got to the hotel, I discontinued her chemo pump for the last time, and flushed her port. It was a celebration. She was tired but proud that she had made it through.
Her fingers were stiff and clumsy, and she was sensitive to the cold, but she was able to hold a hand, wipe a tear, and plant her flowers.
On that day, the end of her chemo, she handed me a package. Inside the beautifully wrapped box with one of her signature bows was the pink, fuzzy scarf, 11 inches wide and almost 10 feet long. I wear it all the time.
My Mom's Chemo Drugs
In November 2004, the FDA approved the combination of these 3 drugs for patients with advanced (stage III) colon cancer:
5-FU (5-fluorouracil) - Side effects include, but are not limited to, unusual tiredness/weakness; nausea; vomiting; hair loss; diarrhea; loss of appetite; mouth sores; dry skin
Leucovorin (folinic acid) - Helps 5-FU work better in the treatment of colon cancer; it has few side effects, including rash, diarrhea, hives, itching, difficulty breathing/swallowing; when these occur they should be reported
Eloxatin (oxaliplatin) - Has many side effects, including, but not limited to, numbness, burning, or tingling in the fingers, toes, hands, feet (peripheral neuropathy); pain in the hands or feet; increased sensitivity to cold; decreased sense of touch; nausea; vomiting; diarrhea; mouth sores; hair loss; tiredness; muscle, back, or joint pain.
Patient Resources
The Foundation for Peripheral Neuropathywww.foundationforpn.org
MedLine Plus: National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine
www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682708.html
American Cancer Society
www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/physicalsideeffects/chemotherapyeffects/peripheralneuropathy/peripheral-neuropathy-caused-by-chemotherapy-toc
American Society of Clinical Oncology/Cancer.net
www.cancer.net/navigating-cancer-care/side-effects/peripheralneuropathy