Second Shot, Same As The First, But A Little Bit Harsher And A Little Bit Worse:

First I have a correction to make to my last posting. When I was talking about blood work and Viral Load (VL) calculations, I said that my VL was 14 million so a 2-log drop would be 140,000. Well, my VL is actually 40 million so a 2-log drop would be 400,000. Don’t ask me where the 14 million came from. There was never a 14 million count. I would like to blame it on brain fog, but since I had only been on treatment a few days… I got a clarification from my nurse yesterday too. As much as they would like to see around a 2-log drop, or undetectable would be even better, any decline is good news.

After my last injection I may have tooted my horn to soon when I said I hardly had any side effects. I felt OK the first night and most of Tuesday. Then Tuesday evening I began to feel a little achy. Like you feel when you are coming down with a cold or the flu. It lasted a few days and then I began to feel fairly normal before my next shot.

Yesterday my nurse came here to watch me inject myself. That went even smoother than I thought it would. As I said before I started treatment, I have a large canvas to work with, lots of surface to move from site to site. I have noticed that the site of the first injection has developed a small red rash. It isn’t itchy or anything, I just noticed it when I looked at it. Yesterday’s site is just a little bruise right now.

As for my reaction to this shot, last night I felt kind of nauseous and agitated. Both interfered with falling a sleep, or staying asleep. At first, I just had trouble nodding off because of the nausea. Then after I finally fell asleep, I woke up from the agitation. Then the agitation made it difficult to fall back to sleep. I also had a little trouble with my teeth chattering. It wasn’t much of a chatter but just enough to notice it. I woke up once during the night sweaty so I had to get up and dry off some before I could fall back to sleep. I tried napping today but I still have a bit of that chatter. I don’t know if it is caused by the agitation or because of small fevers. I know that I still feel kind of agitated, but I also switch from feeling hot to feeling cold when I lay down. So I am not sure what is causing my chatter. I am hoping for a better sleep tonight. I have an appointment on Thursday and I don’t want to go to it feeling whacked.

That is all I have to say for now. I’ll report more as I feel it necessary.

Cheers for now,

David McHep C