{"id":898,"date":"2014-10-29T20:37:47","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T01:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/?p=898"},"modified":"2014-10-29T20:37:47","modified_gmt":"2014-10-30T01:37:47","slug":"infusion-number-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/29\/infusion-number-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Infusion Number 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had my sixth, and last, infusion today. I was diagnosed<\/a> with Common Variable Immunodifficiency (CVID) several months ago after feeling bad for more than a year. I’m not really very sick, but I just don’t feel good. On a bad day, I feel like I’m coming down with the flu (eyes burn, headache behind my eyes, my skin feels tingly like I’m about to have a fever). That’s as far as it ever goes. I never get very sick. In fact, I didn’t even have a cold all last year.<\/p>\n

Although most of the time I manage to do normal activities, I’m not up to par. For example, in 2012 I rode over 5200 miles on my bike. The next year, I started feeling poorly and only rode a bit over 4200 miles. This year I have ridden only 2300 so far, whereas last year at this time I had ridden 3700. (I know, lots of data, but I was a scientist). You might argue that I’m older now than last year. But barely! The point is I haven’t felt as spry in the last couple of years as I usually did.<\/p>\n

I may have been a little more bitchy than usual, but I think I have a pretty good attitude. At least I’m trying to keep a positive attitude; I’ll really get the blues when I get really sick.<\/p>\n

I saw my doctor a couple of days ago. He recommended that I stop having IV infusions every month and do sub-cutaneous infusions once a week at home. The in-home treatments involve sticking yourself with several needles under the skin to inject the immumoglobulins (same medicine as for monthly infusions). It takes about an hour, and a nurse will come one or two times to show me how to do it. The doctor pointed out that the weekly infusions give a smaller, but more frequent, dose. With monthly infusions, I get a big slug of immunoglobulins, which are gradually removed from the body in about a month. With weekly injections, the levels would never be as high, but would never be as low. It should provide a more steady level of immunoglobulins\u2014no highs or lows.<\/p>\n

I agreed to try this new injection method for a while. My doctor was reluctant to take me off the infusions completely, because the blood tests show I have a compromised immune system. However, I can’t tell the infusions helped much and were certainly not a cure.<\/p>\n

This last infusion was the easiest of all. I was given Tylenol tablets and benadryl and steroids with the infusion to mitigate the side effects. This was the same treatment as last time. For some reason, I didn’t feel as bad as before. I had a headache and felt somewhat bad and I was drowsy from the benadryl, but overall I felt pretty good. Maybe I’m on the road to recovery!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had my sixth, and last, infusion today. I was diagnosed with Common Variable Immunodifficiency (CVID) several months ago after feeling bad for more than a year. I’m not really very sick, but I just don’t feel good. On a bad day, I feel like I’m coming down with the flu (eyes burn, headache behind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3qUzP-eu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sunlightbay.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}