Taxol nose bleeds....again

First, your oncologist knows about your persistent nose bleeds, right?

Gosh, Deb. I remember my sister as a child had that cautery for persistent bleeds. I guess some nasal vessels are just so close to the mucus membrane that they burst and bleed.



Your blood pressure is not elavated is it? (i.e. lower bp, less bleeds?) If it is, maybe it's time to consider a blood pressure med.



A good number of us are salt sensitive, and this indirectly raises our blood pressure. Maybe cutting out salt for a week may help some. Where salt goes, so does water, so we retain fluids and bp goes up.



There are new chemicals you can apply directly to blood scraps, containing calcium or other ions I think. You might check with your pharmacist. Seems to me they were developed intraoperatively to help stop topical bleeding. But you must check with your oncologist first to make sure they don't drop your platelets even further.



Hope you get some relief. Thinking of you a lot Deb, wishing you well.

Tender

My RBC went down a little below normal when I did Taxol, but not enough to warrant using Procrit.  Good thing, as it can make tumors grow!  I tried eating foods rich in iron, and it really did seem to do the trick.  Lean red meat seemed to help.  Also made a garbanzo bean soup that was very rich in iron, since it also had tons of baby spinach in it, and used a chicken stock base, since fat helps your body to absorb plant-based iron.  The garbanzo beans are also a rich iron source as well.  After 2 tx's with low RBC, it came back up into the normal range and stayed there. 

If you'd like the recipe for the soup, just post here or PM me.  I love it, and it's really healthy with lots of veggies.  If you like Olive Garden's minestrone, you'll like this soup.

Dear Deb,

I noticed your post last night but was feeling too punk to write. Today seems to be better except for what I suspect is thrush (dammit!).

My onc told me to expect bloody nose with the Avastin. I haven't really had what one might call "bloody nose" in that it gushes, but I do blow out clots or crusts of bloody tissue (my apologies to everyone). This starts to clear up by day 12 of treatment, and then starts right back up again with a vengeance two days after chemo.

After the first round, I got relief with saline solution and Neomycin salve applied inside the nostrils. Unfortunately, that no longer does the trick. I'm beginning to think it's something I'll just have to put up with as long as I'm receiving the Avastin; hopefully this disgusting and quite painful condition will go away after that.

I really wish I could come up with some miracle solution. Maybe someone else can jump in here with a trick that will save Deb's sanity and mine too?

Thanks and hugs to all,

Annie

Hi Deb,

Could you stand eating calf's liver with fried onion? That's fairly standard "treatment" among mothers of anemic children in Europe. If it doesn't gross you out totally, maybe you want to give it a try? Iron pills?

Annie

I have been on taxol two different times and the most recent when I was diagnosed with Liver Mets. I was on weekly taxol and Avastin and Gemzar. The Avastin is what caused me tremendous nose bleeds  and at times I would wake up with my pillow red. It was frustrating but it got to the point when my nose was so sore and began to hurt. My Internal medicine doctor had me go to a ear nose and throat doctor and he put a tiny scope up my nose. He could see several lesions that the evastin was preventing from healing. He cauterized the blood vessels and that helped tremendously. I also used Astelin nose spray it tasted horrible but it was the only non steriodal spray out there and it made a significant difference.