But I do have a numbness in my fingers, which I’m going to be left with possibly for forever. Again, it’s not subsided to a great, I mean it has subsided slightly but in, particularly in the winter, in the cold weather the ends of my fingers will almost go blue, it’s just damage caused by a drug called cisplatin, which is part of the chemotherapy regimen that is given to you, which damages the nerves in your body. Now it was just, it’s one of the side effects that you have but it’s just basically pins and needles in your fingers during cold weather, which is manageable.

But the other effect that I have had with Taxol has been a weird feeling in my toes. it’s certainly, it’s not a pain of any kind, it feels sometimes as if my toes are in cold water and other times as if my toes are slightly swollen, but it’s not difficult to live with at all and in fact half the time I’m just not thinking about it. The one problem I had was trying to buy some new shoes… as I’ve already got very wide feet, this extra strange feeling in my toes, it was hard to decide whether the shoes were fitting correctly.

And are those kind of feelings still hanging about even though you finished your treatment ages ago?

Yes. Yes, I think it is expected really that this will be, certain nerve endings I suppose have been in some way affected. My feet are slightly better, I was walking in a very lop-sided way and that was one of the reasons I was allowed off my last Taxol treatment, and it was explained that possibly the most good is done in the first three or four, and the last two are given as a top-up just in case, so and as my result was good I don’t feel I’ve affected my chances in any way by not having that last treatment.

Anyway I had chemotherapy, at which I was told I was to have twelve sessions and I had ten in all because I had a lot of burning sensations in my feet and in my hands and they thought after ten I should stop it because they were really red. And since then I’ve had, not so much burning in my hands, but my feet have been terrible. And it’s seems to vary from, I can go two days and then it comes back and I have it for the whole day. Another time I might go three days or four but no more. Someone gave me, a pharmacist gave me some cream to see if that would help but it hasn’t really helped at all. But I don’t know whether if I have it sort of a gap of a day or two and then I get it so quickly back again, whether it may be because I’m tense or rushing around or whatever. But, on the whole, I get it every third or fourth day.

So when you were having the chemotherapy, can you just describe a bit more about what the redness was like and what it felt like and your

Well, it was almost like you’d got sore chafed hands from winter and you, they were sort of cracking and that. I had to put lots of cream on them and also on my feet, and my feet I found very difficult to walk with. I mean though I get the burning sensation now, I can walk with my feet, but my feet were so red and hot that it seemed, you know, I did find it difficult to walk with them. And it’s difficult to explain it really but other people that I know that have had chemotherapy don’t seemed to have suffered with the redness of the feet or the soreness, or if they had it during their treatment, their treatment was stopped for a month or so and then they went back to having it, whereas mine continued on once a fortnight, I used to go to the hospital and have it intravenously put in.

And what did they say about that at the time? Did they say that this was an expected side effect and

Yes, I was told it was a side effect of it but they didn’t say you would have it persisting when you’d finished your chemotherapy. But I think they realised that it was very painful, and after ten, instead of having the twelve sessions, they stopped it because they stopped another man. He’d stopped at eight so he obviously was experiencing the same thing as I did.

And nowadays you said that you don’t go more than three or four days
No.

efore having it, and how, when does it happen? Does it happen during the day or when you’re walking about or

Sometimes I can get up and get this sort of, I could go an hour or two and then suddenly I can feel sort of tingling in my feet, and it even goes up into my legs slightly, and I feel that this is going to be a day when I’m going to get it again. And another day I can almost get up with it, but once I’ve got it I never get rid of it until I go to bed and wake up the next morning. And then occasionally, when I wake up the next morning I can feel it a little bit but not as bad as I’ve had the day before. Like yesterday I had a dreadful day of it. In fact, all I kept doing was taking my shoes off and walking round on the cold lino or whatever.

And does it keep you up or does it restrict you from walking around, or is it just uncomfortable?

it’s very uncomfortable. I’m not one that gives in, so consequently I don’t just sort of sit. I did actually last night, it was so bad I did sit with my feet up and I thought, Now, I wonder if that will help But it didn’t help at all.