Finger Tips

So as you've probably read from previous posts (and just know anyway) chemotherapy attacks all your hair, your eyelashes, eyebrows & skin. Something you may not know is that it also gangs up on your nails. From googling (bad Jojo) I read that your nails can lift (the thought of this makes me feel pretty sick), split, discolour & weaken.

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:

Chemo #4

Had Chemo #4 yesterday, 2 chemo sessions left!!!

Turned up to Guildford slightly early for our 10am, appointment and managed to get a space in the chemo carpark which was a good start. Checked in and was shown to the waiting room, evetually got seen 2 hours later, bloody hell, waiting rooms are hideous places!

It took the nurse a while to find a vein & in the end they found one on the edge of my wrist. Yuk!

The total infusion time took about 2 hours, after which we went to get my enormous bag of medicines from the pharmacy.

Have a new nighttime routine of moisturising, putting on cuticle cream, nail strengthener, hand cream and foot cream and then putting on gloves and socks. This is because T can affect your nails and skin so I need to be extra vigilant around this. On Thursday Rob kindly (& brilliantly) painted my nails a dark purple colour as they can be affected by UV and could fall off :s so by painting them the dark colour, the idea is to protect them from the sun.

Woken up this morning (& sorry if this is gross) but I've already managed to poop! On the last 3 FECs it took me 4 days to go so for me this is a mighty victory!