Herceptin + Perjeta for maintenance post chemo

Thank you for the response -- especially after losing the first one. Been there, done that, and I know how frustrating that is! Glad to hear you're responding so well to this treatment! That's awesome news!! So you're just on h/p now, without the taxol, right? Did the worst s/e's ease up after stopping the taxol? 

I was on TCH 4 years ago, and TCH+P now. The s/e's haven't seemed too much different with the addition of Perjeta. I had diarrhea with terrible abdominal cramping both times, so hard to say if the Perjeta has anything to do with it when I know the Taxotere is perfectly capable of making me that miserable all by itself. Chemo has been much harder overall this time, but I blame that on the fact that I was SOOO, SOOOO, sick going into into it this time. Lung mets with pleural effusion, I had been coughing and short of breath for months, and was getting sicker by the day leading up to the time I started chemo. Thinking I also had a bad case of reflux, my regular doctor had me try Prilosec, and I had a terrible time with it. It completely killed my appetite -- I think by stopping the acid production in my stomach, food wasn't moving out, so I had this constant feeling of fullness and could barely force myself to eat. In the 2 weeks prior to finally getting the cancer diagnosis, I dropped 15 pounds in 2 weeks! And I was at a healthy weight to begin with. Luckily, I was at the high end of my healthy range, so I just ended up toward the low end of the range, but still a healthy weight. So I got the phone call that it was cancer on a Wednesday, met with my MO on Friday, had my port put in on Monday, and started chemo on Wednesday. Talk about a whirlwind! That first infusion was ROUGH. Had to stop the Perjeta for 30 minutes because my O2 sats dropped into the 80's. They put me on oxygen and started back again. Then I started having breathing problems again with the very last med (Carboplatin). Doc decided I'd had enough and called it a day. They ordered an oxygen unit for my home, and I was on oxygen 24/7 for several weeks. Those first couple of rounds of chemo made such a HUGE difference in my breathing symptoms, and I was able to go off the oxygen completely. As tough as chemo has been this time, it's been such a blessing to actually feel my health improve with each treatment. It's been a nice trade off for the yucky side effects. Round 5 was yesterday, so I just have one more to go in 3 weeks, then on to maintenance! Sincerely hoping it will be H+P and that the s/e's will be manageable. I think I'll be getting Arimidex, too, so I won't know what to blame. LOL 

Sorry to have rambled on so long. Blame the steroids. LOL 

Thanks again for your response -- it gives me a lot of hope :-)

Carol