Welcome to OCF, David! Im so glad you have discovered our online forum for helping oral cancer patients, survivors and caregivers.
Being in week 4 out of 7, you are right in the middle which is where most patients will start struggling. Im very sorry to tell you, cisplatin is known to cause hearing loss, usually its high frequency hearing thats affected. Unfortunately, cisplatin side effects with hearing is usually a permanent problem. Any patient who has any side effects (no matter how trivial it may seem) needs to report it to their nurses and doctors right away. Please dont worry!!! This isnt something that requires a midnight call into the doc's emergency line but definitely make sure you tell your doc on your next visit before they give you another dose of cisplatin. The type of chemo can be changed to something else, usually its carboplatin. Smaller, weekly doses are better tolerated than the 3 "big bag" method of getting a bigger dose of chemo every 3 weeks. I had the 3 big bags and boy did it hit me hard!!!! I had such a hard time with it that my second dose was cut in half and the third dose completely eliminated. Over the years Ive noticed many who do the 3 big bag method like I was supposed to have often end up not having their 3rd dose. Ive interacted with thousands of oral cancer (OC) patients and survivors from all over the world but mostly in the US, not a single one ever went deaf from cisplatin or their OC treatments. To me, patients going completely deaf sounds a bit extreme!
Hopefully you are doing ok with your intake. This is one of the most important things you can do to help yourself get thru treatments and recovery as easy as possible. Every single day you should be taking in a minimum of 2500 calories and 48-64 oz of water. If you can do more calories daily, for example 3000, 3500 or more that will help you. I cant stress enough how important intake is and how quickly OC patients can go downhill and end up getting dehydrated or malnourished. This happened to me a few times and its no picnic especially when you already feel horrible. The water is especially important around chemo days. Even though patients get extra fluids along with the chemo, one chemo days push yourself to drink more to help flush all that poison out of your system. Some patients do this the day after too and Im sure it can only help the patient to avoid becoming dehydrated. Chemo can be very hard on the kidneys too so pay attention to any changes and report them to your medical team.
If you have questions or need help, you are among friends here. Just ask and we'll do our best to help.
Main OCF Site, Understanding OCNational Cancer Institute, Cisplatin and Hearing Loss
