I had a combination of taxol and carboplatin during once-a-week IV infusions over six weeks. It was roughly a 4 hour ordeal each week. I was put in a small room with a bed and TV and they would bring me warm blankets, drinks and munchies. They pumped 4 different "pre-meds" into me before the actual chemo drugs. These included a steriod, an anti-nausea agent, an antihistamine and an anti-acid. The anti-acid made the arm in which the IV was stuck ache. The antihistamine simultaneously made me sleepy and restless. It then took an hour for the taxol and 30 minutes for the carboplatin. The taxol burned some when it was going in. Inbetween each drug, the IV was flushed with cool saline for about 5 minutes. I grew to really appreciate the cool saline! I didn't have any problems with nausea, but I would wake up every morning with stomach cramps and my daily energy became less and less as the process progressed. Over all I tollerated the protocol very well and I had a good response to it. The chemo shrunk my primary tumor to nothing and significantly shrunk my lymph node tumor. This all went on to help the radiation to be more effective and hopefully prevent any distant micro-mets.

I'm four and a half months post-treatment and I'm doing quite well now. My hair has grown back (except where it was radiated), although it's come back even curlier than it was -- and it was pretty curly to start with. There's also considerably more gray hair than before treatment. I still have a little residual numbness in the fingers and thumb of my left hand, but very recently I have noticed the feeling slowing coming back.

I'm glad I did it and I would do it all again the same way. In fact, from a purely side effects stand point, if I had my choice of six more weeks of chemo or the planned six weeks of radiation, I would have taken the chemo.

-Brett