Carole,
According to past studies patients taking Zometa after Pamidronate have a slightly higher rate of side effects than Zometa taken as the first bisphosphonate treatment. If your creatinine is normal (it should be checked before each I.V,) then your kidneys are OK.
Other more common side effects such as feeling of heat in some parts of the body,joint pain,fever,...are the common ones especialy after the first infusion.
Following recommendations from hospital pharmacist & nurses, taking a Tylenol an hour prior to the I.V. & one every 4 to 6 hours for a day has resulted in complete suppression of these symptoms. For subsequent infusions only one pill was taken as a preventative (perhaps unnecessarily).
As an extra precaution you could ask the nurse to set the infusion time at 30 minutes instead of 15. This might provide added protection to the kidneys & reduce some other symptoms.
The original duration in trials was 8 minutes but had to be changed to 15 when a high percentage of kidney problems developed. Since the manufacturer of Zometa wanted to use the short infusion time as a marketing advantage over competing drugs such as Clodronate & Pamidronate it may not have been inclined to set it any longer even though it may be helpfull to a small percentage of patients more prone to side effects.
Finaly a rare but serious side effect is osteonecrosis of the jaw whose risk can be reduced by avoiding dental procedures while taking Zometa.See this post for more info:
http://www.her2support.org/vbulletin...ad.php?t=24978