Adriene Hughes temporarily lost feeling in her extremities during treatment, but later ran in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer 5K.
(ADRIENE HUGHES)
Numbness in the hands and feet from some chemo medications can make daily tasks like holding a pencil or fastening buttons nearly impossible. “Taxol makes your feet and fingers tingle, and the small veins tend to go numb,” says Adriene Hughes, 48, who had a single mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy and reconstruction. “It also makes your body ache for five days. It feels like someone beat you up. You can barely move.”
There’s no easy solution, says Marisa C. Weiss, MD, an oncologist and founder and president of BreastCancer.org. “But there is some research on the benefits of B6 vitamins for numbness. And patients can manage pain with Neurontin.”
Women also sometimes get brittle nails on fingers and toes from chemo and burns from radiation. Most of these aggravating side effects go away eventually, but it may take time.
See part 2 of this series, about such issues as breast reconstruction, sex, fertility, and the future.
Read more survivor stories.
This content was first published in Health magazine, October 2008
