Hi Steve,

My husband is on his third week of radiation treatments and is getting amifostine subcu injections as well as cisplatin. He is tolerating the injection so far, including during the cisplatin cycle. We were told that subcu as a delivery method has less side effects than IV fpr what it's worth.

We had heard about the side effects and also struggled with the decision but decided to try it and take a very proactive approach to the nausea. So he takes zofran twice a day every day and uses the compazine for break through nausea. In addition he takes claritan 1 1/2 hour before the subcu injection with an additional 16 oz of liquids. On the weeks he is having cisplatin he also adds emend for 3 days and I do 12 hours of IV hydration through his port on those nights. Hydration and nutrition is a really big part of this. Jack has a peg tube and is using it for most of his nutrition. He is still able to swallow liquids by mouth and we are watching out for any signs of dehydration as things can deteriorate pretty quickly if that occurs.

Our MO seems willing to try most things we've discussed but I have noticed that we need to be very clear with him that we want a proactive plan on the side effects that are very common and that you can do something about as opposed to the ones you just live with.

Some people have told us that they skip the amifostine on the cisplatin days so that's another option. Jack thinks the shot is painful going in but that stops after 10 minutes or so. He felt that the cisplatin really wiped him out and it took about a week to stop feeling awful from that. This week is a non chemo week and he is having no nausea and his energy level is better - in his case it was the cisplatin.

Hope this helps and good luck with trying it again. It seems to me that there's no right or wrong answer on this, it's real personal when you're the one having the symptoms.

Jack has done okay on the zofran so maybe you could ask your MO/RO about different meds? The MO/RO will probably need to get additional authorization from the insurance company to pay for daily doses of zofran as some them limit the number of doses alloted per month in their formularies, but that's true of many different medications so they're used to it.

I hope that things will get better for you this week. Jack has his second cycle of cisplatin next week so we'll see what happens as time goes on.

Regards JoAnne