More blood tests.
Dark clouds, heavy with rain. Platelets, still dropping - didn't need a number on a chart to tell me that, after the fountain that erupted from a tiny nick of the finger...he is no longer allowed near the knives. White cells also dropping. Haemaglobin, down.
A ray of sunshine breaks through the gloom, and the dingy cramped office is briefly a glow with a feeling of optimism, or at least how I remember optimism to feel...ALT and AST are down by half. ALT and AST are two liver-specific enzymes that are surrogate markers for the 'itis' in hepatitis. In a healthy liver, these enzymes reside inside the liver cells, but when a liver is damaged or inflamed, they leak out into the blood and go on furlough through the body. The fact that they have dropped indicates that the interferon is doing something and that the liver is calming down, a bit.
No time to bask in the warmth of good news, straight down to the pharmacy to pick up the new prescriptions: the highly anticipated yet thoroughly dreaded protease inhibitor. These 'new' drugs are the most recently approved weapon in the battle against viral reproductive rights. They recently received fast track FDA approval in the US, and are approved here by the TGA, yet have not yet jumped through the politcal hoops necessary to make it onto the Medicare schedule of drugs worthy of government support - which means it costs $1100 per week!
But, you get your money's worth, considering that covers 12 pills per day!!
Don't panic - we aren't paying that much, but I will cover that in a future post when I explain the health care system here - if I ever figure it out myself...
Where was I, oh yes, the new drug...yuck. 4 pills, every 8 hours. This in addition to the other antiviral, which is 3 pills, every 12 hours. In total, 21 pills per day. His primary focus each day is keeping track of his dosing schedule - no easy feat considering the decline in mood and mental acuity.
The major side effect of Boceprevir is a persistent bad taste in the mouth, described by some as wet cardboard, but declared simply awful by Kevin. Well, at least he didn't get prescribed Telapravir, which commonly gives rise to anal rashes resulting in what some have termed as 'firerrhea'. The Boceprevir will also cause anemia, which will deepen his fatigue.
On Monday, we'll get the results of the viral load test, which will be a big predictor of the potential for success of this endeavor. Are there more storms on the horizon, or is there a patch of blue out there, somewhere...Seems my emotional meteorologist has gone walkabout, leaving me without a weekend forecast. I must learn to be comfortable in the still winds of the unknown and wait.
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