Adcetris the second cycle, Day-5

I'm feeling pretty good. Either that or I'm getting used to feeling like crap.
So far I've had no real problems with stomach ache this cycle, also no headaches to speak of.
As I sit here I feel perfectly well, not a hint of feeling "poisoned" let alone nausia. My back is aching slightly and to be fair by the end of the day it will probably be quite uncomfortable, but that's not unuasual for me even if I wasn't having treatment. I think half the planet suffers from back pain!

My knees are stiff and sore as is the rest of my body, as I've mentioned previously I think that's related to weening off prednisone rather than being adcetris related. (OK.. maybe there's just a little bit of muscle/skeletal pain that just might be drug related.. but it's minor at this point in time).
There's still that ringing in my ears (tinnitus) too but I can live with that.

Oh! I nearly forgot.. A couple of days ago I thought I had a chest infection or similar. I went out and bought $20+ worth of cough syrup and Vicks Vaporub (to make an inhalation to clear my chest) and the next day it was all back to normal without using any of it!  ..Typical! but a good thing I guess :)

On the work front I've been busy trying make up for the year lost to ill health, with most of 2011 totally unproductive due to either being in hospital or just too weak to work.
I've been working on developing a new profile for my "Flextech" brand of silicone turbo-charger hose.
Yesterday the printers delevered the new packaging, so I've bagged up a few items for display and I'm very pleased with the finished result! Now I just have to get out there and start selling more so I can eat!  ;)

Friday I stopped in at the panel-beaters and checked out progress on the Toyota. It's coming along nicely and the guys working on it are really keen. It's good when you get work done on something and the people doing the work are almost more excited about the job than you are!  :)

..Ron

Adcetris the second cycle, Day 3

So far so good.
My biggest problems seem to be related to the reduction in prednisone. General body and joint aches. Hmmm.. although thinking about it that's a side effect of adcetris too!
Anyway my knees are really stiff and my hips ache at night. It's like I suddenly aged twenty years overnight! Mind you my knees were always stiff and painful, it's the steroids that have masked that for the last two years. Welcome back to my old worn out body complaints !  ;)

I did feel very flu-like yesterday and ran a low grade fever in the evening. That hasn't happened tonight so far. I also felt very chesty like I had bronchitis, but that's improved today. What part the cotrimoxazole antibiotic I'm taking as a prophylactic has played in keeping that at bay is anyone's guess.
I'm still coughing up gunk from my lungs. That could be for anyone of a dozen reasons from inflammation, dying cancer cells or even infection.

I'm now on only 15 mcg of insulin a day, half what I was taking just a few weeks ago when I was on 20+mg of prednisone (now 14mg). I'm also managing to keep my blood sugar readings within the normal range with very little effort or change in my current diet.

It's been about ten days since I last had a sleeping pill too (zopiclone). In the previous eighteen months I couldn't get to sleep due to the itching. I haven't had any side effects from the sudden stop, and no rebound insomnia either. I'm sleeping as well as I ever did prior to getting sick (which is pretty good!).

Last cycle the worst side effects occurred around the next few days. However I've been told that adcetris is cumulative, so there would still be residual amounts of the drug in my system. This might mean that I react totally different this time, or maybe not at all.

Here's hoping!  ..Ron

Adcetris the second cycle. Day 0

Had a fairly uneventful trip to Palmerston North this afternoon for my second cycle of adcetris.
Once again it was all over and done with in just over thirty minutes. I feel completely normal and at this early stage of the cycle I don't expect to have any side effects. They will come later in the week if last cycle is anything to go by. Some people have said that each cycle's side effects are different and you can't always go by previous results. We shall see I guess.

One piece of really good news is that I've been allowed to continue dropping my dose of prednisone.
The doctor has suggested a reduction rate of 1mg per week. This is twice as fast as I would have done it.
I guess I'll just keep dropping until I start to feel side effects and slow down at that point, possibly stabilising at a dose before dropping further if there are problems.

Posts won't be so often now, probably every few days or so unless something interesting or different happens  :)

...Ron

Adcetris Day 20, Cycle-1

What a day, I'm worn out!

Sarah and I dragged ourselves out of bed at 6:30am and headed off to Mount Victoria for the annual Alexandra road hillclimb. Because it was also the last round of the National Hillclimb Championship this year, there were a lot of out of town entrants including Sloan Cox in an Evo 10 who leads the series with convincing wins at every prior event. The competition was going to be tough!

Image Courtesy of Graham Meiklejohn

To make matters worse on my first practice run I damaged the right front suspension after I hit a large pothole (cutting corners at speed) and did not realise how bent it was until the end of the event.
I just could not get down to the sort of times that I know the car is capable of, and initially thought maybe it was me being rusty behind the wheel.

Image Courtesy of Leon Cast

On my last run I gave it my very best to try and drop my time, however I missed a gear change and lost precious fractions of a second.

It was still good enough to get me within 0.12 of a second of the national champion sitting in second place. This gave me a final result of third place overall.

Image Courtesy of Leon Cast

Murray O'Neil in the other Flextech sponsored car had an amazing day leading the field from the start and winning the event. Congratulations Murray, a well earned win!








So a brilliant result and another great day of motor-racing.  I'll be parking the Evo away in the storage garage, pulling down the door and leaving it there for quite some time. The list of repairs and servicing it needs is quite long and way down the list of my priorities for now.

Tomorrow see's Sarah and I heading off to Palmerston North for my second cycle of Adcetris.

...Ron

Image Courtesy of Geoff Warren