The evening of Christmas Day, as we were finishing up dinner and about to head home for the night… my feet started to itch. BAD. I took off my socks and began to notice a rash starting to form on my feet and lower legs. Maybe a heat rash? Not sure. Decided to head home and by the time we got home (about 45 minutes later) the rash had spread to my low back.
The next morning I woke to the rash covering my entire body. I took two Benadryl and took a short nap. When I woke up, the rash had spread to my face. I called the on-call doctor at Cancer Care Northwest because it was a holiday for Christmas observed. The doctor recommended that I go to the emergency room. So here we go to the ER on the day after a holiday…
I had to wear an N95 mask to prevent getting another illness while I was there. I was hot, itchy all over and the wait time… unknown. We ended up waiting for 10 hours. Sitting in the waiting room watching people come in and out. Coughs, crying, noise. So much noise. We sat in the only two chairs available which ended up being next to this empty chair that had shit in it. Yup, literal shit. Every time someone came up to sit in the chair we had to tell them… “don’t sit there” … why? “Because there is shit in that chair.” We probably said it over 20 times throughout the day. Then a homeless guy walked in and as we were telling him not to sit in the chair, he sat right in the chair, straight in the shit. He did not care one bit.
We finally got to see a doctor, who loaded me up with antihistamines, epinephrine and steroids. Nothing helped. They decided to send me home with a prescription for prednisone and some anti-itch cream. Basically miserable at this point, we went home and I could barely stand the itching anymore. I wanted to scrape my hands and feet off. I had to take a sleeping pill to fall asleep and in the morning…No change. After several days of prednisone, the rash finally decided to ease up and within the week it was beginning to diminish.
So part of my treatment plan was immunotherapy, specifically Keytruda. It was to be administered during my chemotherapy to treatments every third infusion, beginning with the first infusion. This rash was assumed to be caused by Keytruda, however did not appear until 2 weeks after the administration of the drug. Crazy.
Crazy and Miserable.
Mandafit 