Up, Down, All Around

There are ups and downs to this research regimen. Yesterday, I went in for my 12-week tests. I am finishing the experimental drug tomorrow. They needed to determine how fast the drug disseminates into the bloodstream, so the time of the testing was controlled so that they could take blood samples at specific times after I had taken my dose of the meds. None of this is a particularly big deal, it just means a bit more time and a few more questions to answer. It is interesting to note that, despite the attempts to make these tests consistent and rigorous, the human error factor rears its head from time to time. In previous visits, they have forgotten to take my weight, in this test they took my weight, but forgot to take my blood pressure and temperature. I’m sure somebody got a ding for that as they have been quite concerned about the state of my blood pressure throughout the project thus far.

I came in to this visit with a sore throat and told AVB that I had the sore throat, some coughing and nasal stuff. We also discussed the side effects, which ones were decreasing (itching, general cough, irritability) and which were either steady or increasing (fatigue, shortness of breath, muscle weakness). I then went off for the blood draws for this round.

They took 17 vials of blood. The blood guy (who has been drawing my blood for several visits now) estimated that it was from 18-20 ounces of blood. This is roughly the amount that they have been taking since the beginning of the test. So they took about a pint at the start of the test, at weeks one, two, four, eight, ten and twelve or roughly 7 pints of blood in 12 weeks. Despite their claims to the contrary this has to be stressing all my systems. This is a lot of blood to be replacing in normal circumstances, but given that my red cell and white cell producing systems are both being suppressed by the Interferon and Ribavirin as well as some additional white cell suppression by the RO5024048 Polymerase Inhibitor, I can’t believe it is without consequences.

I think I am living them now as the sore throat and developed into a full-blown flu-like outbreak last night and today. Mild fever, productive cough, sore throat, all the delights of flu. Sure I could have developed this anyway, but somehow having over a pint of blood withdrawn just while it was coming on seems like it must have contributed to the onset. Who knows? I did get vaccinated for both strains of flu this year and that has to help, but I think that if the timing of all this were different, I might have a milder case of this. In any case, I’m going to delay my Interferon injection for a day to give my immune system a bit of help before dosing it again with an inhibiting agent.

The good news: Still Undetectable. It is now officially 3 taqman tests showing undetectability. This is great news and I will celebrate accordingly when the flu goes away. Really, I promise.