Taxol vs. Doxil Side effects

FelineMum

Background: I'm Stage 4 Triple Negative. In April, after more than a year of post-diagnosis treatment that wasn't quite done - with 8 rads sessions remaining - a local recurrence and mets to the liver were confirmed. I already was physically and emotionally drained, far beyond exhausted. My oncologist told me I had 6 months or less to live. She told me about the chemo drug most likely to give me more time, but the additional time likely would be 3-4 months. After thinking about it for a couple weeks, I declined further treatment and entered hospice in June.

Fast forward. My expiration date is in 3 weeks. But my body has held its own. While the tumors found in April have grown, there's no new tumors on the liver or elsewhere. My albumin is slightly low. Otherwise, I have normal levels on my blood work. A liver function panel also is normal. My hospice nurse practitioner agreed with me that I'm kinda healthy for someone who's dying. She feels I'll likely live into 2019. I wanted to know why my body is doing this, if the liver tumors that were only identified as breast cancer due to a lack of viable cells for testing could be a different type of breast cancer than TNBC. She encouraged me to reach out to people who might have answers.

I did. On Thursday, I found out the University of Michigan has accepted me as a patient and my first infusion is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. 4 days from now.

My oncologist thinks either Taxol or Doxil would work best. I live nearly 3 hours from the U of M, so he doesn't want to do weekly infusions. If I go with Taxol, it'll be the 1 every 3 weeks version. That does have more severe side effects than the regular version given 3 out of 4 weeks.

I've been reading about Doxil and it seems pretty friendly SE wise. I did Xeloda for 6 months so I have experience with Hand Foot Syndrome. But there's so much more to consider and that's just one of the drugs!

If you took one of these, would you please tell me about your experience?

The goal is to add time. Only this time we're now talking in years, not months. But I've spent 5 months in this place where I'm both living and dying at the same time. It can be a very tough place.

I need to know what the cost to my body would be. Thanks.