Methotrexate Side Effects & Patient Stories

Here’s what cancer patients had to say about their experiences with Methotrexate:

I had three drugs on Week 1 and two drugs on Week 2. I did that seven times.

My first week was etoposide, methotrexate and actinomycin-D. That was an overnight infusion, so I had to stay in the hospital for that.

I checked in at 8:30am, got settled in, did my labs, and all that. I normally didn’t start on chemo until about 2pm. I would go from about 2pm to about 6am.

I’d hang out and wait. Then I had another infusion for an hour and a half, and I’d go home in the mid-afternoon.

— Caroline Chisolm (Gestational Trophoblastic Neoplastia Grade 3)

I’ve had a really bad chemo cough. That’s from the methotrexate I’m on now for maintenance.

— Ciara Toth (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia)

They had done research on the combination of methotrexate and navelbine, also known as vinblastine, and doing that in low doses over the course of a year.

That had shown to be very responsive. But my oncologist told me at the very beginning that I was something like the 60th patient that he had treated in his career with this. It’s something that’s not common.

I never really knew what to expect for my first 18 rounds of treatment. I would say that the first one was an hour-and-a-half to two hours, but then from there it varied anywhere between 45 minutes and my entire day.

I had two separate chemos, the methotrexate and the vinblastine, and at the first location, they were both administered by a chemo bag, like a drip. They didn’t do any saline.

— Ashley Williams (Desmoid Tumors)

I alternate between one and two mercaptopurine pills. Those are just a chemo pill I’ve been taking for years now. That’s the only daily one.

There’s methotrexate that’s a more common one that I take weekly unless it’s a treatment week then I’m not taking it because I get it through the IV.

— Evan Lessler (Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia)