Part 2 (con't)

So yesterday was treatment #2 and all in all it wasn't too bad. A new drug was introduced, Rituxan, and that meant I would be there 5 hours instead of 2. It's fairly standard to have an allergic reaction to the Rituxan, anything from no reaction at all to complete intolerance so I needed to have a nurse in the room with me, monitoring blood pressure and watching for any negative reaction. Luckily, my cousin, K, a cancer nurse at Sloan Kettering is off on Wednesdays and she volunteered to come with me, removing the necessity of having the infusion done in hospital.

I started out with a blast of Benadryl & Tylenol to try and head off any reaction, then moved on to a drip bag of CHOP.

Then we started the Rituxan.

They start off really slow and then increase the drip, watching for a reaction. After about 10 minutes, I started to feel an itch in the back of my throat and in my ear. She slowed down the drip. Then my eyes started watering a lot and I got hives. It was interesting to observe this happening to me and both doc and K were keeping a close eye on things. When I started to wheeze and my throat began to tighten, doc said that was enough (we had gotten thru about 1/4 of the first of 2 bags of Rituxan) and she removed that bag, gave me a major blast of Benadryl and some steroid, and went back to a CHOP bag for a while.

In about a half hour, the allergic symptons were gone and she decided to -- chemo speak-- "challenge" me again with the Rituxan. This drug is what is known as a monoclonal antibody (whatever that means) and apparently not all of it is made from human stuff. Some of it comes from rat or cat or dog or something else which I can't remember now. It's that stuff that the body reacts to.

Anyway, she re-hooked the bag, dripped me real slow and this time everything went fine. I went thru the 2 bags, then finished up the CHOP (including 2 fat syringes of Red Devil, the stuff that causes chrome dome, and by 2pm K and I were out of there.

About this time, my friend J came by, and, as he's known K for years, and I knew that shortly my taste buds would again be all screwed up and all the other side effects I now expected, we decided to head immediately out for a bottle of wine to celebrate my successful challenge of Rituxan. I could barely keep my eyes open, but we had a fun time.

Then K walked home, J drove me home and hung out till AM showed up (I have a great tag-team support system!), she and I had dinner and I finally passed out around 11:30.

When I spoke to doc this morning I mentioned that last time I conked out as soon as I got home but this time, although I was exhausted, I couldn't sleep. She explained that this was due to the steroid blast and was natural.

And now I'm up to date till Friday when I have to inject myself with the Neulasta, which brings my white bood cell count back up. Time for a nap