Experience with Xeloda (capecitabine) and Avastin (bevacizumab)

ruby18585

Hi! I'm new to this community and I'm asking on behalf of my mother. I hope this is the right forum.

My mother had stage III invasive ductal carcinoma ER-/PR+/HER2- over 22 years ago. This year she was diagnosed with bone mets. After switching from Femara to Faslodex, she now has extensive mets in her bones and liver and spots on her lungs and some other parts of her body.

Her oncologists now suggested a combination of Xeloda and Avastin in order to maybe stop or even reduce progression for a while. My mother is opposed to chemotherapy because she knows she cannot be healed and didn't tolerate the chemo 22 years ago well. She is also a very slight woman (5'7" and 112 lbs) and gets nauseous easily. However, she is now reconsidering giving this a try but wants to know what people really experienced on this therapy.

Is there anyone out there who had or knows anyone who had the Xeloda-Avastin combination? What were your side effects and did it actually help you? Thanks for your help!

Moderators

Hi Ruby, welcome to Breastcancer.org. We're sorry for what you and your mom are going through, but glad you found this wonderful site for information and support.

Until you get responses from other members here, you can type in "Xeloda-Avastin" (without the quotes) in the Search function you'll find in the left blue menu, and you'll see every time those words have been mentioned in a post, and can then check out the thread and read and maybe contact those users.

Hope this helps! Let us know how you and your mom are doing.

The Mods

Becs511

Hi Ruby,

Do you know why they are recommending Avastin? It is not generally considered a chemo used against Breast Cancer, unless required under very specific circumstances.

My Doctor wanted to put me on Avastin (and I am already on Xeloda and Herceptin) because there is some anecdotal evidence that it helps shrink brain mets and radiation necrosis. It took about 3 weeks and a lot of back and forth to get it approved by my insurance (which has never fought anything else).

I had 2 infusions of Avastin (along with my Xeloda which I am on a 7/7 schedule) and I couldn't handle it. The Avastin made me miserable and since there is no true scientific proof that works for the reasons my doctor started me on it for, we decided to stop it. I can always go back on it if needed, but right now the Xeloda and Herceptin seem to be doing their jobs.

ruby18585

Thanks for pointing out the search function! I couldn't find it ;-)

ruby18585

Thanks for pointing out the search function! I just couldn't find it.... ;-)

Hi Becs!

Thanks so much for your reply! I don't really know why they recommended Avastin. I think it has something to do with it restricting blood-flow to the tumors? Which I'm guessing would be really important for the liver mets. So I'm assuming you don't have any bad side effects from Xeloda? My mom is 68 and not doing too well right now, do you think it's worse for somebody older?