From the first moment my wife discovered
she had breast cancer, there was a deafening silence from the men I know. Even
ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have
received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for
answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The
following entry appeared in November of 2011.
Though I talked
very briefly some time ago about what the various chemotherapy drugs that my
wife was treated with were “for”, I never really went into any kind of detail.
Now that chemo is
“over”, I wanted to explore what some of the long-term and lasting effects of
the treatment are. Because she reached that time – what with the odd numbing of
her upper lip, the incision pains, swollen ankles and dry skin, I’d like to
know which of those things is chemo-derived and which ones are not.
So we’ll g0 here
next:
What’s “neulasta”
and what does it do?
Chemically,
“neulasta” is N-(3-hydroxypropyl)methionyl,
1-ether-alpha-methyl-omega-hydroxypoly(oxyethylene).
Looks like the
picture up top. Complex. Lots of chemicals.
But what’s it DO?
“Neulasta”, is a
special protein that’s based on sugar (an oligo-saccharide, meaning that the
molecule has only a few small units, in this case a sugar ) that’s attached to
a protein to form a glycoprotein.
The glycoprotein
is a very important part of a cell wall – the cells that are being targeted are
white blood cells. The white blood cells are also called neutrophils,
granulocytes and stem cells and are the main part of the blood that destroys
microscopic body invaders like bacterial infections, viruses or other germs.
The glycoproteins help the white blood cells recognize the germs.
Neulasta makes the
marrow in bones produce more white blood cells to replace the ones killed by
Cytoxan, Adriamycin and Taxotere (which I talked about above) while they are
busy killing cancer cells that are growing out of control.
The “colony” in
the “colony stimulating factor” is the white blood cells in the bone marrow.
So – “neulasta” is
injected just under the skin and gets into the bloodstream. It goes along until
it reaches the bone marrow where it forces (also known as “stimulating”) the
growth of new white blood cells to take the place of the older ones killed off
by the chemicals in chemotherapy.
Side-effects?
Sure. Any one of us who’s seen the Red Devil injected in his wife, mother or
girlfriend knows what I’m talkin’ about here. With stuff like THAT going into a
human body, to expect NO side-effects would be the crazy thing! There are
“minor effects” – did any of the
researchers experience any of these symptoms? If they had, would they have
called the effects “minor”? – of the injection, things like hives; difficulty breathing;
swelling (face, lips, tongue, or throat) as well as bone pain; pain in your
arms or legs; or bruising, swelling, pain, redness, or a hard lump where
the injection was given.
More serious
side-effects (though according to the test trials, these rarely happened: sudden
or severe pain in your left upper stomach spreading up to your shoulder; severe dizziness,
skin rash, or flushing; rapid breathing or
feeling short of breath; signs of infection such as fever,
chills, sore throat, flu symptoms, easy bruising or bleeding (nosebleeds,
bleeding gums), loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, mouth sores, or unusual
weakness.
My wife didn’t
seem to experience any of the side-effects. In fact, though we expected WORSE,
the chemotherapy (while horrible in its own right) only threw us a few curves.
Because of the neulasta injections, she didn’t seem to catch any sort of germ
at all and stayed (on the chemotherapy scale of things in our “new normal”
world) pretty healthy.
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