The Last Session of Methylprednisolone - Hurray.

Week of 9th to 15th July 2007

Thanks to Jim - twice- and Terry and Les, I have help with transport for three sessions and Tina takes me on Wednesday and Friday. I feel woozy, weary and progressively heavy legged as the week goes on and sleep at least two hours every afternoon. I struggle eating my breakfasts, but enjoy my lunches, which are soup, followed mostly by Ryvita with ham or pastrami and salad, despite my sore gums and mouth ulcers! I try a hot chocolate with a Jaffa cake on Monday afternoon after my sleep, but by 7pm I am feeling decidedly queezy and am sick. That is actually the very first time I have been sick since I started my treatment, despite several times being close. So no hot chocolate for a while! As a result of that experience, I start taking Metoclopromide before each meal and it seems to work. I don’t really enjoy my dinners this week and keep to fairly small portions, although Tina tries to get more into me! The goats cheese and tomato pie is tasty and works well, but my appetite is not great.

My weight varies between 73 and 76.2 kgs through the week with no logic from day to day. I am using the weighing platform each time, so find it really odd that there should be such differences day to day. For example on Wednesday I am 73 kgs but on Thursday I am 75.4 - an increase of 2.4 kgs. My blood results on Monday and Thursday are:
Wbc: 4.2 and 7.6; Neut: 3.5 and 7.2; Lymph: 0.5 and 0.6; Hbn: 10.7 and 10.3; and
PLT: 133 and 168. By Friday I am feeling generally pretty lousy and sorry for myself, with my legs also starting to fill out with fluid. I then get a call from Tim Corbett with news that Kings have identified another CMV reactivation. Fortunately, the reading is 6955, not up in the skies like last time. The decided treatment is 900 mgs twice daily of the anti-viral tablet Valganciclovir for the next 21 days and drop the Aciclovir I am taking No admission into hospital is needed unless the CMV readings rise.

The Methylprednisolone effect is soon upon me as far as sleep pattern is concerned. I am awake at 3am Saturday morning and thirsty, bearing in mind I am only happy drinking very cold water at the moment. I am awake again at 4am and read until 7am (so I am getting back into “Small Island” by Andrea Levy). I then sleep on to 9.30am while Tina went into work. I just about manage a late breakfast and then spend the rest of the morning in the lounge with my legs up, catching up on some old TV recordings, resting and feeling tired and lousy. I recover enough by 2pm to have my usual lunch and then have a good two hours sleep until Tina comes home from work. I don’t feel like dinner until quite late. We are sitting down at 9.30pm. It ok for me but far too late for Tina, bearing in mind she has been at work all day. I cannot help it though. It is the Methylpred. and my body clock!

That night I am awake and reading again between 3am and 5am, but then sleep on until 9.45am. We have a morning visit from Lynn Ross and by 1.30pm I am upstairs asleep. Then it is a 3pm lunch, more resting and sleep for me in the afternoon and 8.30pm dinner.
As expected the Spanish pork casserole works a treat! However, I find no great taste in the little French beer or the fresh cherries, although Tina says they are really nice.

I start the course of prednisolone tablets on Saturday with 70 mgs (14 tablets). Each day the dosage reduces by 10 mgs until I reach two days of 10 mgs and 5 mgs respectively, making a total of nine days.