Tami --

Reading the forum over the past few months there seems to have been a subset of patients who had very severe reactions ot their treatment, that is, beyond the usual expected (though admittedly also very unpleasant) side-effects. This may be due to some underlying external cause or it may be that they were especially sensitive to the chemotheraputic agent. Many of them received cisplatin which is known to cause a fairly serious suite of toxic effects, but usually tolerated with appropriate therapy (e.g. newer anti-nausea meds). At Hopkins we met two people with serious (unexpected) effects thought due to the chemo, one was hospitalized for a few days in fact, but again there may have been something else going on. It probably is not a bad idea to have such things as lupus ruled out in your mom's case.

Gail