Brand new with Follicular Lymphoma - hello!

Sorry that you have to join! B-R is seemingly the new gold standard in follicular treatment. And, it is better tolerated than many older regimens - once any infusion reactions are controlled. As to the anti-emetics, I pretty much traveled with Zofran at the ready. As to the constipation that the anti-emetics cause, you may be able to kill two birds with one stone here. I did not have B-R, but did have several other drugs that caused nausea.

Tiring of the constipation, I stopped the Zofran at one point and my body had apparently become acclimated to the drugs, as I did not have nausea. However, at the first sign of nausea, I popped a tab of Zofran under my tongue, nitroglycerine-like, and let it melt. The nausea dissipated and went away completely within a few minutes.

Your kidneys need lots of flushing, so water is the natural choice. However, there are flavored drink mixes that are sweetened with such as sorbitol, mannitol, erythritol, etc. These are naturally occurring "sugar alcohols" and while they add sweetness, they carry little to no sugar or calories. The big plus for those suffering from constipation: they cause a concentration of water in the colon, thus naturally relieving much of the constipation.

Crystal Light, Hawaiian Punch and other sugar-free powdered drink mixes have them. This was very good news for me, as it got rather boring pouring down gallons of unflavored water. You might give them a try.  

And again, welcome!

Welcome Jeni. 

I did 6 cycles of R-Chop starting near the end of January. The day after the R-Chop I got a Nuelasta shop. I didn't think I would have problems with nausea but I took the meds any way. I didn't want to find out the hard way I was wrong on that one. As to constipation, this was a concern for me. After my first round of chemo it was a struggle to get regular. Then I stumbled across a comment somewhere where the person said they found it best to start taking the anti-constipation meds the night before the chemo. Worked like a charm. 

As for isolation.  Well I didn't. My treatments were on a Tues. The Wed of the following week I went into work. I work in IT and my boses were good with what ever I set for my schedule. If any bug was going around I worked from home. Of course chances were I was already exposed by the time a person found out they were sick but I never got sick. Family and friends wer weclome to stop by as long as they were not sick or had been around anyone who was sick within the last week. My grandkids live about 20 mins away so it was rough not seeing them regularly. So we used Skype to stay in touch. It was great since I could see them and they see me. If they weren't sick we would visit the Sunday before my next treatment. 

After the R-Chop test showed the cancer was still hanging around so I went in for 3 cycles ot RICE with Stem cell to follow. For mulitple reasons I never had the stem cell but did do 2 years of Rituxan. 

During all of this I used an idea from a co-worker who fought cancer years ago. I created a newsletter. I would send one out after a chemo or any scans. I put togethr an email group for people at work who wanted to be kept updated. This way everytime I got back to work I didn't have to tell everyone who asked, what was going on.  I did the same for family and friends but I usually revised the news letter a little because it was family & friends. We did have to skip celebrating Labor day and Halloween. I was done with chemo mid-October so we were able to do Thanksgiving and Christmas. What was fun is our kids (we have 3) jumped in and did most of the food prep.

One big positive for all of this is that I got a LOT of reading done. 

Good luck with your adventure.

JeaniNOW1 said:

Making water more interesting

I just now ordered a Stur brand drink powder which sounds pretty healthy, a combo of stevia, sugar and natural fruit flavors.  Anyone familiar with it?

But it sounds good. Will have to have a look.