Renee Gentzel

“Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me…”

Yep! It’s my birthday, and while many a birthday girl will be adorning themselves with gifts of precious metal, I am the very lucky 38th birthday lady that will be INCORPORATING precious metal into her body. Yes, let’s all say ‘Yay’ for Oxaliplatin!

Oxaliplatin is the “OX” in my FOLFOX chemotherapy regime. The heart of this compound is PLATINUM (see its chemical structure below for all my chemistry-loving colleagues out there!). It is an antineoplastic agent whose fellow compounds include cisplatin and carboplatin, not-fun compounds known well by the breast cancer community. Confusingly, OX is classified as an alkylating agent even though it does not alkylate DNA to cause DNA adducts. Basically, it messes up cells by binding to DNA, causing FUBAR situations to arise in the reading of the DNA. This then triggers a domino effect of inhibiting DNA, RNA, and protein synthesis. CELL DEATH (or, as scientists like to say in a Fancy Nancy way, apoptosis) occurs, hopefully to just any lurking tumor cells and not my normal cells.

Who am I kidding, my normal cells are totally going to get some impact! This OX will be the reason I may develop neuropathy and cold sensitivity. There’s a reason why heavy metal exposure is risky, and this one in particular doesn’t play nice with peripheral nerves. But, you know, cancer — it makes you want to risk all kinds of things. Will update this post to report on any side effects. In the meantime, have some cake!

Update: The icing appears to have worked yet again! No cold sensitivity in mouth, feet or hands after the OX infusion. I have the 5-FU pump infusing over the next ~46 hours, and then I’ll be off fasting. Crossing fingers that I’ll have mild side effects again.