I had my full dose infusion of Rituxan yesterday in my home.

Definitely the way to have an infusion. Got my dogs with me for some puppy love, relaxing in my chair and catching up on DVR.

The infusion was started very late which was a downside. My nurse had an issue with a prior patient and an infusion that was already scheduled late was now started at 6:30pm. Rituxan, like Ocrevus, is a 5-6 hour infusion so you could imagine how late this would be done even if everything went 100% smoothly. It did not.

My first IV line blew up my vein which caused immediate swelling in my arm so we had to do another IV line. I don’t have the greatest veins from years of steroids. They have the tendency to collapse or roll or even be deceiving in their depth. After the first attempt to start a new line she just couldn’t catch the vein. I had to now sit with heating pads on my arms to get veins to hopefully pop. This thankfully worked and we continued on with the medicine. I had to be checked when some blood and fluid dripped down my hand but luckily it was just to tighten the tube connections.

I finished at almost 12:30am and unfortunately with the amount of fluid that was in the dose I had to urinate all night. Didn’t matter I was up most of it anyway. Even with my everyday medicine that includes Flexerol and the Benadryl I had to take, the steroids offset them both. This morning I’m tired and have a slight headache. I’m going to need a few days off.