I say that chemo sucks knowing that it may be saving my life. I never thought I would do chemotherapy until the doctors explained the huge outcome difference it made in whether or not my cancer will come back. During chemo I've had a lot of miserable symptoms including vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, muscle aches, bone pain, loss of appetite, intense nausea, hair loss and FATIGUE.

When I was gearing up to start chemotherapy, I started to get suggestions from folks to try acupuncture for the side effects. Initially, I didn’t listen because the thought of adding ANOTHER treatment to my list of treatments was overwhelming. I am already taking a lot of medication, having a lot of appointments, etc. and the cancer fatigue is REAL. I didn’t take the suggestions seriously until about two weeks after my first infusion when I began getting neuropathy in my feet so badly that it would wake me up at night. Neuropathy is a pain from nerve damage and usually feels like weakness, numbness or pins and needles. It can be a common side effect from some types of chemotherapy. More commonly, diabetes is the cause of neuropathy in people not in cancer treatment. The neuropathy in my feet wasn’t too bad but it was irritating enough to wake me up and keep me up at night. My oncologist suggested acupuncture for the neuropathy, which is offered by my insurance at Kaiser. Unfortunately, there was a long wait with Kaiser for acupuncture and I found out they only start with your ears for a few sessions before moving on to your whole body. It also sounded like my visits would be limited to 1x/month.

A friend told me about Numo Acupuncture in San Jose and I found out that I could get full body acupuncture there for almost the same price as my copay at Kaiser. I started going one time per week and now I swear by it. My neuropathy symptoms are completely gone! GONE. I am sleeping through the night again and have more energy. Acupuncture and yoga have been, for me, the most helpful adjunctive therapies during this process so far. Acupuncture is one of the oldest practices of Chinese medicine and was created sometime around 100 B.C.

I love to know more and couldn’t help myself, so I looked up some research about chemotherapy symptoms and acupuncture. There is a solid base of research showing it can be incredibly helpful alleviating symptoms of chemotherapy or other cancer treatments including decreasing joint and bone pain. It has already helped me more than I was expecting and I will continue to go weekly through radiation and beyond.