Rituxan, Week 2 -- Chimeric Boogaloo

I had my second cycle of Rituxan yesterday, and it went very well. I arrived at the NIH/NCI day hospital at 8 am, was lined up by 8:30, did the blood letting thing soon thereafter and had my Benadryl/Tylenol cocktail around 9:30 or so. We waited for the CBC results before starting my treatment at 10 am. It went very quickly, and since my body is now adjusted to Rituxan, I didn't need any Demerol this time. We started out at a rate of 50, then cranked it up to 200 half an hour later once my vitals checked out okay. I was done in 2 hours 45 minutes. A lot faster than the 7.5 hours it took the week before!

I got the pre-treatment CBC results before leaving and was very surprised by how quickly (and high) my platelets had rebounded. When I left 6 days earlier, my platelet count was at 88, but it jumped up to 122 by Monday morning. As you can see in the plot, that's the highest they've been since late May.



All the other counts had also risen significantly to near pre-Rituxan treatment levels. Two down, six to go...

11/18/2009 Update: Just got my pre-Rituxan flow report for the peripheral bloodstream. It indicates that the concentration of hairies in the peripheral bloodstream doubled to .4% from .2% just 1 week prior. Likewise, the count per microLiter also doubled, so the increase was consistent from both percentage and count perspectives. Given the decrease in normal counts that were also observed in the CBCs since remission was suggested, it's likely that my remission was going to just last a few months, if that. Looks like we hit the Rituxan just in time!