Monday's injection seemed a little rougher for Karen than Friday's. Maybe it was the extra day off, or maybe she just felt it a bit more because she was less drowsy than she had been the previous week. Karen tested out her theory by taking both a decongestant and using a nasal spray, but neither helped with the headaches. In fact, it got so bad she had to take migraine medication again. So maybe it isn't related to her sinuses after all?
Wednesday we got to see our oncologist before the injection. We talked about the side effects, and he said Karen's sensitivity to the wind was a normal part of the flu like immune response. However, it's not something Karen or I have ever experienced with a flu before. While he's fluent in English the doctor has a slight accent, so I thought it might be a language barrier. I made a second attempt to describe the side effect using different words and phrases, but he insisted it was a normal flu like symptom. He said adding ibuprofen to our regimen would help. A couple months back, we met with someone filling in for our usual palliative care doctor. He suggested Karen stopped taking ibuprofen for pain, even if it meant using more oxycodone, because the ibuprofen had the potential to cause liver problems in the long run. It seems everyone else is fine with Karen taking ibuprofen; so we've added that back into our regimen and it's made a big difference. And not only with the chills, headaches, etc, but with the quite intense bone, joint, and muscle pain caused by a sensitivity to airflow. This made Wednesday's injection the easiest to deal with yet.
And following that, Friday seemed to go slightly better than Wednesday. It seems that, as we had hoped, the symptoms seem to be lessening with each injection. Not by a lot, but certainly by some. This is such a relief. In our experience with chemotherapy, the symptoms worsened with each treatment, and it really makes you dread going in for the next one. This is much easier to deal with.
At the start of the week we had some bloodwork done. The only thing that seems to be getting worse as time goes on is Karen's platelet count. It just keep dropping. However, this seemed to start the week before we started the clinical trial. I'm not sure if it was just a fluke right before we started the trial and then the injections have continued this trend, or if it's something else unrelated to the trial. In contrast, Karen's white blood cell count seems to have gone up after the first week. I don't know if this is the body's natural response to these injections and the flu like symptoms they cause, but I'm quietly hoping this means something is working.
We have one more week of treatments, then we have a week off. To mirror the first 7 hour observation period, Karen will have another 7 hour observation period - on her birthday of all days - where they will repeat all the testing they did with that first injection. After the third week, we get one week off, which completes a "cycle" of treatment. Then after two cycles, Karen will get another CAT scan and we'll see if the injections have had any noticeable effect on the cancer.
