Metallic taste: Some people experience a metallic taste during chemo.One friend’s partner found sucking on hard candies helped get rid of the metallic taste. [Val did have a metallic taste occasionally, but not often. The entire first year, she found her appetite and sense of taste largely unaffected by the chemo.]
Hair: A few weeks after a certain kind of chemo starts, people begin to lose their hair.It turns out the scalp can be quite tender during this time.When her hair began to fall out, Val shaved it very short with clippers, and shortly thereafter, shaved it all the way off. (A friend knew someone who used sticky tape to pull off stragglers.)
Aches and pains: Another friend recommends arnica lotion and emu oil. She says: When my mum [on chemo] started having joint pain and muscle aches, I gave her some arnica lotion (it’s available at different places, but I really like the stuff from Salmon Creek Botanicals in Vancouver) and she said it helped a lot, enough so that she recommended it to her doctor and the nurses and other people she met in chemo. It’s a natural product and the smell was pleasant to her, even after her sniffer turned other, formerly beloved scents into icky odors. She also found emu oil helped with the tingling she experienced on her chest, around her chemo port, should it come up.If you do try the arnica lotion, I highly recommend rubbing it on the bottoms of the feet as well as the affected areas…it sounds strange, and I kind of scoffed when the lady at the farmer’s market at which I originally purchased it suggested it, but it really helps!
Reflexology: Actually I know nothing about reflexology, but when Val felt nauseated we found that if I pressed the soles of her feet with my thumbs, particularly in the middle of the foot, it could really help alleviate the nausea.