Chemotherapy and Anemia

Anyone out there familiar with anemia and chemotherapy? I am 6 treatments into an 8 treatment chemotherapy regimin. I went in for my weekly blood test today and they told me my red blood cells were low. I will need to get a shot to up the RBC next week. I am freaking out as my chemo has been relatively good (good white cell count, not too much sickness). Is this bad? The nurse claims it’s fairly common for this to happen, but I guess once you get diagnosed with cancer, any even slightly bad news will send you into a tailspin.

Consult your oncologist. There’s a really good drug for chemo patients with low red counts. There’s also a really good one for low white counts.

There’s no need for panic. These things happen, and your doc can adjust for it.

The drugs in my wife’s regimen didn’t cause anemia, but she had to delay some treatments for low white counts. With the new drug, she could resume the treatment. This stuff works. Hang in there, and keep your doctor informed about how it’s going.

Yeah, pretty common. I can recall getting the RBC boost at least once during my chemo, but mostly it was the WBC boost I was getting all the time. Neupogen twice a day for a week after each treatment for eight treatments, self-administered. Boy, that was fun. :rolleyes:

Thanks for the info. I currently get the WBC shot the day following a chemo treatment, but I get Neulasta. WBC’s have been good. Never had a low RBC and was really concerned. Haven’t had to delay a treatment (yet) for low WBC.

Many chemotherapy drugs target rapidly reproducing cells. But cancer cells are not the only rapidly reproducing ones; the red blood cells are reproduced (and die off) at a high rate too. So it is a very common, expected side-effect of many cancer treatments. Fortunately epogen (aka erythropoetin) helps to boost red cell production.

You just hang on there, PooterMommy, they can sort this out.

My mother is an oncolgist, and they spend a lot of time sorting out low white cells, red cells or platelets. They have fixing complications of chemo down to a fine art, so you’ll be in very good, very experienced hands.

In case anyone hasn’t told you already, pineapple and papaya are the things to eat if you are having gastric side-effects or mouth ulcers, and a low haemoglobin is a good excuse for a steak dinner, if you can stomach it.

Look after yourself and take it easy, take care and good luck.