Vem Phase 1 complete

So as of today, I have finished with my Vem cycle. My last dose was this morning. I had planned an earlier mid-week blog post, but didn't have the energy to type anything up.

This week has been kinda rough. My joint pain intensified greatly, but I am unsure whether it was due to my own doing or just how it happened. Where as before the joint pain was fairly dull, with only one part of my body being affected by sharp pain, this past week almost all my joints hurt at the same intensity at once. This made my past weekend very uncomfortable.

For the past couple of weeks I had been taking an Aleve along with my Vem doses to help curb this joint pain. Even though I was doing this, it didn't seem to really help. I was hoping it could cut the pain right out, but it never did 100%. So this past week I switched to taking some extra strength Tylenol instead, to see if it would work better. A couple days after the switch I noticed much more pain and it took me another day or two to make the connection before I went back to taking my Aleve. It could be just a placebo effect but the pain has again decreased to just one area of my body. In this case, it's my right wrist.

Even though I'm finished with my doses, I don't expect my side effects to completely wear off by tomorrow. In fact, I know that I'll likely still be the same leading into tonight, as taking my doses 12 hours apart never gave me any respite. We will see how things are going by this weekend. In the meantime, I'll keep taking my Aleve if the joint pain gets too bad.

So what's next on the agenda? Well, this next week I won't be doing anything. The doctors want to give me a week for the Vem to wash out of my system so it doesn't interfere with my next treatment cycle. Then next Tuesday will be a long day for me. I'm going to try to get out another update before then, but I'll likely not post again until after the first Yervoy infusion day.