This was the second week of the Karen's second cycle in the clinical trial. Much like the previous week, this week went very similar to that of the first cycle. Most of the symptoms seem to be slightly less severe than the first time around. For example, she still gets headaches but they don't seem to be triggering migraines, so she's better able to use her phone for texts. However, it turns out she's even more sleepy and fatigued this cycle. Wednesday's injection was the worst in regards to this. She went to bed around her usual time, maybe a bit early, but slept for around 20 hours. Then, after being up a few hours, slept again until Friday morning. I was starting to get quite concerned, but Friday's injection was much more typical.
At the end of the first week we got to talk to our research contact and one of the things that came up was the early appointments. He said there's no problem moving them further into the day. We thought noon would make things easier for us and they adjusted all of our future appointments accordingly. We were quite happy with the change and thought it would make getting to the appointments much easier on us. And it did, but it had one unintended side effect. During the first cycle, Karen would be fine the evening before her next injection, but now, with her injections happening 3 to 4 hours later in the day, she isn't recovering completely until bedtime. I'm not sure if the extra sleeping is related this schedule change, or if it's just compounding the issue. Karen says that for now she still prefers it later in the day - and compared to those 6:30am appointments across town, who wouldn't? - but maybe we'll aim for something in between for the next cycle.
