So far my nails have gone slightly yellow, felt tingly pretty much non-stop (a bit like the feeling when you shut your fingers in a door) & they've also developed some horizontal white rings/lines going across them. A bit of research tells me that these are called Muehrcke's Nails/Lines, are completely normal whilst on chemo & are indicators of periods of stress on the body.
At the moment my nails are staying put, and with only 1 chemo left, I'm keeping everything crossed they'll stick around. As (so far) what I'm doing is working for me, I thought I'd share my nailcare routine in case anyone else out there is going through the same thing.....
Every night I use Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream which smells fresh & clean & helps keep my cuticles soft & moisturised. Then I use Scholl Nail Conditioner (I got it in the 99p store - bargain!) on both my toe and fingernails. After that I smother moisturiser (at the moment I'm using Vaseline Healthy Hand & Nail) on my hands & feet and then finally I put on some socks & cotton gloves to help my skin absorb all the treatments.
Every day I use Tropic Body Love Buttercream & every couple of days I soak my nails in Care+ Almond Oil as a natural cuticle treatment.
Some of the forums I belong to suggest that UV from the sun can affect your nails whilst on chemo & that painting them a dark colour is a good plan. Luckily I have my own nail painting god in the form of Rob :) Every couple of weeks I use Sally Hansen Miracle Nail Thickener as a base coat & then use a dark colour on top. I have been using Avon Midnight Plum for the whole of chemo so far so think I might switch to something different later today - just have to speak to Rob nicely :)
My nailcare package:
That's some nailcare routine! Only one more to go, yay Jo!
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