Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Chemo and rituxan begins.....

Renee's schedule was for 4 complete weeks of chemo, spread of 4 months. She also was to take 4 treatments of rituxan, one day a week for 4 straight weeks. These treatments work independently of each other, so they did not need to coincide.
The chemo would be adjusted to give 5 days worth in 4 days, as we were starting on Tuesday. Renee was to take both on this day, and the rituxan would take a long time, since it has to be given very slowly at first, to determine if Renee may experience any dangerous side effects.

Renee had to take some benedril first, for fever like effects of the rituxan. The benedrill made her drowsy, and Renee fought the drug, since she was nervous and did not want to go to sleep, as she knew the rituxan could have bad effects. This put her into a "fight or flee" mode, as described later by a nurse, with her adrenalin kicking in. She got over this, and was able to relax.
Everything Renee took was administered intravenously, including the benedrill, anti-nausea medicine, chemo (fludorabine), and rituxan. It was a long day, and the rituxan did not have any bad side effects. The day lasted between 6 and 7 hours.

I kidded Renee later telling her that she did fine with the chemo and rituxan, but had trouble with common things like needles and giving blood, and taking benedrill.

1 comment:

BigJohn said...

My second round of treatment was with Rituxan and allowed the WM into my lymph nodes, Rixtuxan was not kind regarding side effects as I had sore, swollen throat, upset stomach, my bones often hurt and the hurt traveled from location to location, heavy heart beat.. IgM went from 2000 to 800

I went off from Rituxan and onto Fluobine and that seemed to be much easier on my system, my IgM count dropped from 2000 down to about 700+ and had been on Fludorbine for 5 months when my platelets went down to 66k and had to wait for build up.

Now that my platelets are back at 103k I am back on a 28 day cycle a mixture on Mondays of Rituxan and Fludorbine, the other 4 days of the week just Fludorbine and all those Fludorbine side symptoms came back. At night I am a tummy sleeper and when I wake up to move it is like my ribs are being torn from my body, after I get my body moved the pain subsides. 5 days after treatment I still have sore & swollen throat, upset stomach, heart beat is not as heavy as day 3. I have read that Rituxan works on about 50% of folks that receive it.

My question is; are others that receive Rituxan going through the same thing ? I have been taking one form of chemo or the other for about five years now and can't say that it makes life much fun as one never gets to go anywhere or do anything with going to the doctor all the time. I would enjoy some feed back from those that have had similar experience and answers the question on Rituxan [is it worth it?]