Hi Susz,
I had the cyclophosphamide (aka. cytoxan)when I had high dose chemo before they harvested my stem cells. I'm pretty sure the melphalan was part of the chemo I had during the transplant but I'm not positive so I won't comment on that one till I'm sure.
The cytoxan was pretty bad. I was in the hospital for a weekend to get it and was fine until I got home. It sucked the life out of me and I couldn't just rest after I had it because I had a million appointments to prepare for the transplant. It was over 3 years ago but I remember nausea/vomiting, hair loss (what little I had left), extreme weakness and lethargy. Out of the entire transplant with all the chemos and procedures, the cytoxan was the worst. Sorry. Of course, that was in extremely high doses. I don't know how it would be in a lower dose. Hope this helps.

Susz,
I forgot but it also caused some urinary and digestive system problems that got better but not totally. I guess it did some permanent damage.

Susz,
Hubby had Melphalan - his first lot and his last - It made him extremely tired, vomiting, very weak, diaohrea, could not get out of bed for 5 days. He stopped after three days of treatment. Said he would rather not have anything.
Roz.

Susz: I had mephalan in combo with Doxil. I don't whether it was the mephalan or the doxil, but the only side effects from both was fatigue, then the last dose, nausea for a couple days. No appetite---BUT is has come back in spades!! since I've been of everything for 5 weeks.

Hi Susz~~ I had cyclophosphamide after VAD and before Thalidomide. Apart from being extremely tired and nauseous there really weren't any other major problems, but my paraprotein didn't drop very much. When I moved on to Thalidomide I started dropping rapidly, but the side effects, particularly the peripheral neuropathy in my hands started to get really bad, so much so that I couldn't even type, let alone do origami (which I love) so I had to stop. My doctor is saving the Melphalan to use on me when the Revlimid starts to fail. We will probably do a combination of Rev/Melphalan to start because I have had such a fantastic response for the past 27 months from Revlimid. Melphalan was the first 'basic' treatment here in Australia, but my doctor decided to start with VAD so I didn't use it initially. That's why we're saving it now, because I have had almost everything else and they say that the results aren't very good when you go back to try something a second time. Hope this is of some help...I've just joined this board and am still learning how to navigate! Cheers, Cath

Susz-

I was dx with mm 3/94- I did not undergo melphalan chemo but did undergo 2 rounds of cytoxan in 9/95. The cytoxan did a good job of managing my mm but caused a number of side effects. If I had it to do over again I would supplement with antioxidants.

http://beating-myeloma.org/search/node/antioxidants+during+chemo

Also, to read up on cytoxan, side effects, etc. go to

http://beating-myeloma.org/subject/cytoxan

Be sure to scroll down in the wikipedia window to the list of side effects-

You can search "melphalan" on the beating-myeloma website at well to read what members have said.

Good luck,

David Emerson
http://beating-myeloma.org/David-Emerson-Story