Two Lucky

Most patients receiving IL-2 start to do badly after the 5th dose.

By “do badly”, we understand that many patients’ blood pressure begins to fall. Also, liquid can start to accumulate in the body. There is a risk of capillary leaks - fluid can route into the lungs, and the patient is wheeled to the ER.

By the 5th dose this morning, Rusty’s blood pressure had fallen below 80 mmHg, and was at risk of having the next dose stopped, or at least, postponed.

Typical values for a resting, healthy adult human are approximately 120 mmHg systolic and 80 mmHg diastolic (written as 120/80 mmHg, and spoken as “one twenty over eighty”). To continue receiving treatment, we needed to kick his BP up to at least 95 mmHg and above.

The most common and immediate way to do this is to hydrate the patient. So began hours of persuading him to drink, even though he was disorientated, feeling poorly and would rather be sleeping.

He had said to me earlier: “Be tough on me. Don’t let me give up. Do whatever you need to do to ensure I take the full 15 doses.”

So I was, and did. It is too early in the game to give up. Even though in the last two hours, he’s puked up nothing but water four times, we made the cut. His latest BP reading clocked in at 98 mmHg.

The sixth dose is scheduled for 8pm.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 10th, 2007 at 7:27 pm and is filed under New York, Melanoma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.