First Treatment Completed

So I just finished my first treatment with the clinical trial.  The treatment seemed to be very similar to the last trial I did.  This one was a little more work though because they wanted a biopsy too.  Started this treatment with a bunch of blood draws on Tuesday.  Then Wednesday morning I went in a have a bunch more blood.  Meet with doctor Grossman which started the treatment.  After meeting with the Dr. I went and got the infusion of Pembro/Keytruda.  This process takes about an hour.  When you get there they have to order the drug from the pharmacy so a little bit of it is waiting.  They have a nice sitting area with TV’s at all the infusion stations.  There is about 32 infusion stations at Huntsman.  It always amazes me how busy that place is.  The infusion started about 9:00 and were out of there about 10:30.  We went up and got checked into the room we were going to stay in then they took me to interventional radiology.  Here they pretty much knocked me out.  They did a biopsy and injected the clinical drug using aCT for guidance and to make sure they did it in the right place.  I was probably only there an hour or so and then back up to my room.  The coordination from all the doctors was great.  When we did a clinical trial at USC we would wait for hours on end to go from one stage to the next.  At Huntsman it was one thing after the other which was great.  The reason I stayed over night was so they could drain all my blood and save all my pee too.  It seemed like they were drawing blood every couple of hours.  I didn’t realize I could spare so much.  I felt pretty good until later that night.  I got flu like symptoms like the chills, headache and body aches.  This was expected for the most part.  When we got home on Thursday I was extremely tired and didn’t have much energy.  That has been pretty typical of a treatment.  I usually sleep a lot in the days that follow a treatment.  This morning I woke up feeling pretty good.  I will go to work and try to have a normal day but I am sure fatigue will slip in later today.

Below is a timeline of my next steps:

Week 1 Infusion, Injection and biopsy (completed)
Week 2 injection
Week 3 break
Week 4 infusion and injection
Week 5 injection
Week 6 break
Repeat

From my understanding I shouldn’t have to stay in the hospital again.  Some days will be longer than others depending on the blood work that needs to be done.