Thank you so much for your insights!! Taxotere was part of my first line of treatment and I lost every hair on my body, but no hearing loss, so maybe not the hairs inside my ears, though the hairs inside my nose are gone, combined with the oral (and nasal) mucositis that leaves me with a chronically sore mouth and nose. I'm forever putting Neosporin in my nose to keep the mucus soft enough to not cause bleeding when I blow my nose!! And my lashes and eyebrows are gone, too, with no sign of them returning. I do have about half an inch of hair on my scalp and I've been on five cycles of carbo and gemzar by now so my oncologist thinks it may stay -- guess time will tell on that one! And I've been so tired and out of breath on this line of treatment (my 5th) that I can't get much done before I have to stop and rest. I saw my oncologist this morning and he says he's going to tweak my dose to see if maybe he can get that to improve a bit. And at my last scan in January I still had some fluid around my lungs from the lymph node overgrowth emergency I had last October, so I've been taking Lasix daily since my last appointment to try to get rid of that. He's going to order a chest X-ray to see if that's still limiting my lung capacity and if there's enough in any one space to try to aspirate it. So maybe I'll be getting back to my summer baseline of energy sometime soon. I hope so, anyway!! But the January scan did show that the lymph nodes that had overgrown in October were shrinking and the lung tumors we've been watching for 3 years have also shrunk, so that's good and if the price of shrinking tumors is lower energy, maybe I just need to learn to manage with less energy!! On the good side, I got my port before I got any chemo since Taxotere was going to be the first thing we tried!! And "Portia" as she's named, has been worth her weight in gold. In the 3 years I've had her she's been accessed 123 times for 104 chemo infusions, plus surgeries, scans, and lab draws!! My veins are forever thankful!!

Glad you found it helpful

Thank you Laura AH for steering me to chemocare.com. They had lots of good information there!!

I did Carboplatin as part of my cocktail,(Taxotere, Carboplatin, Herceptin for my HER2+) 6 sessions scheduled for three weeks apart. Taxotere and/or Carboplatin can cause hair loss, anemia, affect blood cells counts, fatique and nerve damage- so it's hard to say whether one of the other was to blame, or both. But I did have hair loss (it came back but thinner, hardest hit was the eyebrows and eyelashes which are basically non-existent now). The anemia, low blood counts were picked up on labs, and twice my sessions were postponed by a week. After the 4th session, I got a plasma infusion as the numbers had dropped too low for the surgeon to install a port (needed because Taxotere was burning my veins). All that cleared up after chemo ended. The nerve damage, again most could be Taxotere or Carboplatin, the burning, tingling numbness cleared up slowly after chemo ended- leaving me with just numbness at the tips of fingers and toes- which is more an annoyance than anything. The ONE side effect that is directly attributed to Carboplatin, has to do with hearing. It can damage either, or both- the auditory nerves themselves, the hairs in the ears. Since the hairs cannot grow back, Carboplatin can cause hearing loss. With damage to the nerves you can get hearing loss, and/or tinnitus. For me it is tinnitus- I hear cicadas 24-7! So, anything I want to hear has to be louder than the bugs in my head! I have found a white/pink noise machine that can mask the sounds. Without that, I have a difficult time even falling asleep. The literature said it should clear up, but the health professionals said in their experience it would end up being part of my new normal. But, so far, 3 clear mammos, and no other symptoms, hoping for clear mammo number 4 next month!