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Hi all,

im using elastogel caps.

completed round 2 of 4 ac treatments with 12 weekly taxol treatments to follow. Because I'm cold capping, My oncologist offered dose dense taxol on a two week basis for 6 times instead. Any advice on changing to dose dense two week interval taxol?

Also I would love to get info about successes with my AC plus T treatment. I keep hearing with this type of chemo the cold capping is not going to work? No one at my cancer center believes it will work. It's worked so far I'm just thinning...I'm stubborn so I'm doing it anyway.

Caps questions ;

I started thinning little by little since the three week mark. I'm blond started with a lot of fairly thick strong and straight hair. During capping I start by wetting my hair and using a bit of cream rinse and arrange wet hair to to have no part line. I Just sort of streamline my straight hair backwards all over. I use a thin shower cap over this so the caps don't stick to my hair. I cap for about 6-8 hours. Starting one hour before, then for as long as I can stand it after.

I did get a tiny bit of frostbite with flaking after the first capping. This was from frozen hard wrinkles in the top of the cap material. My cold cap crew got better at somthing wrinkles the second time. they also couldn't get them to -31f on the second round! On the second round the dry ice was not in cubes and was hard to deal with. I strongly recommend the cubes. The boys resorted to changing caps faster every 15 mins because the temp was only -21. I hope it worked I'm just a week out from that one.

few questions. I really want to partially cover my hair on off days since it's a mess. Any suggestions on covering it with bandannas and or skull caps? I excersize and do use bike helmets and plan to use ski helmets when I'm feeling good. The helmets alone will rip up the hair. I've been using shower caps under my winter hats to avoid pulling.

Also I've not figured out which shampoo to get in the USA.. How about leave in cream rinse for cold cap days? Or just water alone on cold caps days? I've been rinsing the cream rinse from my hair the night of cold capping..I read this is a no-no. I can't stand to sleep in a cream rinse head. Maybe I should just use plain water with the caps next time?

Thanks for any input.

I have

Stage 3a invasive ductal carcinoma with lymph node involvement. Chemo- 4 AC plus 12 Taxol. Neo-adjuvant surgery to follow chemo. radiation, tamoxifen. I'm 53 years old.

thanks much