Every three weeks or every week for Herceptin

[KsGal]

Hi everyone! Ever since I stopped chemo and started the q. 3 week herceptin, I am sore all over all the time. My muscles and joints are just killing me, especially my ankles, feet, etc. Some mornings Im so stiff and sore I feel like Im 90 years old, and Im still working so it is an issue. Does anyone else have this side effect? Do you think that possibly switching back to once a week herceptin might help? Im a wee bit frustrated because this makes working kind of difficult for me, but I need to keep my job for the insurance.

[Becky]

You can try it. I started with the weekly and then switched to every three weeks because I didn't want the weekly grind (and I travelled alot for my job and didn't want a cancelled flight to make me miss my infusion).

Others may have different experiences.

[Cathya]

When I was having trouble staying on herceptin my onc switched me from the 3 week to weekly but it made no difference to the side effect on my heart.....not sure about other side effects tho. Intuitively it seems like the right solution though doesn`t it.

All the very best.

Cathy

[Lani]

Several on this board have reported that asking the team who mix up the herceptin to omit mixing in the benzyl alcohol preservative) from your herceptin IV markedly improved the musculoskeletal complaints they had while on herceptin) If you weigh enough to have more than one vial of herceptin mixed up, you will need to share the second vial of herceptin with someone else (it is too expensive to throw away the rest) and that vial has to be mixed up with the preservative as the next person won't be getting herceptin at the same time you are) But let's say you get 1.2 vials of herceptin, then you will only get the tiny amount of preservative that was in the one fifth of a vial rather than 6 times that much (the amount in six one fifth vials)

Feel free to use search function on this --i have posted this at least five times before. Again, this could be in a thread pn what to expect from X treatment (gamma knife, liver embolization, herceptin infusions along with NCI descriptions, personal experiences and "helpful hints from Heloise"

[Lauriesh]

I agree with Lani about asking to have the herceptin mixed without the benzoyl alcohol. I did that the last few times and it has made a tremendous difference in the amount of joint pain I get.
They just said I had to get in on a day that another person was getting it, which has never been a problem.
What is also interesting is that my urine doesn't smell anymore. I hated the smell the first couple of times I went after getting herceptin. It must be the alcohol that was causing the smell because that is gone also.

Laurie

[KsGal]

I will ask the next time I get it...I think I had read that before and just not remembered. Thank you all so much.

[Ellie F]

I get variable amounts of joint pain, sometimes a little sometimes a lot.so far I haven't been able to work out why but maybe this is a reason. A couple of days after I often feel down and tearful, sometimes notably worse than others. Will now look further into the reasons.
Hugs
Ellie

[Alycen]

I too have just finished up my chemo will start my herceptin every three weeks tomorrow. During chemo, for what they called "bone pain", they advised I take Claritin, an allergy medicene. They don't know why it works, but it takes away the bone pain. It is a 24 hour allergy pill. I used it several times during regular chemo, you might try that and see if that helps.

[pibikay]

As far as I can gather the normal practice here is a 3 weeks gap betweeb two herceptin infusions.Hema had very little side effects from herceptin