Cue the long groan, I am out of remission and my platelets hit a startling 53,000 this week. This triggered swift action by my new hematology team, so I am taking 40mg of prednisone daily.
Before I get into that- let me tell you how much I love my new hematologist. Dr. Ahn retired February 2018, so I was nervous about seeing a new doctor. Friends of mine recommended Dr. Harrington at UM (who’s father happened to discover how ITP works). He’s brilliant, funny, and practical in his treatment of ITP, especially when it comes to steroids. I was so glad to hear him say he won’t keep me on prednisone for a long period of time.
I had blocked out most of the negative experiences I had almost 5 years ago with steroids. After all the moon face, acne, weight gain, constant hunger, anger, poor temperature regulation, and insomnia were horrible. Well, that’s all back and I have been expressing my frustration about it. I was finally able to sleep last night, thanks to medical marijuana (more on that in an upcoming post). I wish I had that stuff back in 2014 when this journey started. I woke up this morning a bit more refreshed and less hungry. My goal right now is to not gain any weight while moving through this part of the treatment process.
I’m documenting bruises again and getting weekly CBCs. Obvious goal: using Rituxan again. But I run into the same problem I had in 2014, safety data is scarce. I’m leaning on my team at UM to trust that since it worked once, it will work again. Since I am traveling a lot this month, I am hoping by mid-May we will be able to get those infusions going.
If you have used Rituxan more than once for ITP and are willing to share your experiences with me (and your CBC data), please email me at [email protected]. I’m planning on doing something similar to what I did in 2014, creating a mini data set to show the efficacy of Rituxan for immune destruction of platelets.
There’s more to this story, I am still hard at work behind the scenes to get ITP patients access to a CD 20 inhibitor ON LABEL. Stay tuned.