Table 2 Focus group statements relating to sensory experience: hand numbness and tingling and pain. Focus group statements about sensory experience of the feet are provided in Supplementary Materials Table S5.

Numbness, tingling

A

27:55

So I now, I really only have any loss of feeling right in my fingertips right at the very end of my fingers. So my feeling has improved

B

14:18

Sometimes in the mornings I wake up, and I do this (wiggles fingers) to get them. I feel as if I’ve slept on them, even though I haven’t slept on them, you know, because wake up with the pain and tingling, and I can’t feel anything

B

16:30

I had the tingle in my hands for a good 6 months after the chemo and they were actually trying to work out … a better way to give me the chemo, so that I would have less problems with my hands … because I use my hands to see with (participant 11 is blind). In the end they stayed with the normal once every 3 weeks, but once, once the tingling … started, it just stayed

Pain

A

34:03

There’s an interference, isn’t it? I think we’re saying that there’s some pain you can discriminate well enough. But now there’s a pain element which is when you press

A

39:06

Even now (5 years on), because the room is quite cool my fingertips are painful and so to take anything I know I’m touching because of the pain, more so than the sensation of touching

A

56:54

I’m wearing gloves in the morning, and also for the discomfort. If I was to touch something even just hooking the dog’s lead on and off, trying to use the clasp and things like that can be uncomfortable

B

03:59

I’ve got … few problems with my hands … the only thing I can’t do is play the guitar because of the pressure on the very tips of my fingers, and I just can’t do it now. … yes, it’s pain

B

04:19

I find it painful to read very new Braille for a long time because when it’s … it’s sharper. and so … I could only read it for so long, and then it would get painful, whereas if it was older, Braille is duller … it was easier to read