Ants and Needles and Pins: Living with Neuropathy

Abstract

Life is a journey of choices, known to the research community as risk/benefit analyses and to the lay community as choosing the best ways to live as successfully as possible with success being individually defined. For those of us with chemo-induced neuropathy, the neuropathy is a sequalae of one of those hard choices. A question we need to consider is if the choice was an informed one. Did we know both the negative and positive consequences of the choice to have chemotherapy and how do we live with the consequences of our choice? We dealt with the short-term negative effects such as profound nausea and hair loss. The question now becomes dealing with the long-term effects. Some of us were unaware that all side effects do not end when treatment ends.