Immunoglobulin
First off, apologies if this post is a rant, because quite frankly this past week and been a mess and it shouldn't have been. The real deal is that what occurred at clinic and with Coop never should have happened or even been a discussion, but it is, because of the measles. A disease that was eradicated and is now growing with a vengeance because of person preference and choices. Now, we don't want to get political, but put any parent that is in that oncology clinic in an argument with an antivax person, and sorry but you will lose. We have more data, more scientific knowledge, and more numbers and blood levels to back up that argument than 90% of the population and the bottom line is that it is scary, it is real, and yes...those people who aren't vaccinated who are impacting HERD immunity ARE affecting our kids not just themselves....but we digress.
Long story short, due to patient 0 in MD, there have been exposure issues, let's say...it's much more of a nightmare than that, but we will leave out the details.
During the first month of maintenance they do a mid point blood check just to make sure everything was ok. So it was supposed to be a quick day. The week before they checked Cooper's IGG serum which is supposed to tell them his antibody level to fight infection. They didn't expect this to be low as they normally see a low level on kids who have a much more intense chemo regimen.
Essentially, they check this because chemo regimen's for kids often wipe out your immunities and also wipes out a good amount of your vaccines that you have when you're a baby. Kids going through treatment can't be revaccinated until 6 months post treatment, so they check the IGG serum. Well Coop's came back low, so they needed to infuse the immunoglobulin, which is what patients get when they are exposed to the measles. IGIV is a pooled donor sample of antibodies, so it comes with side effects, one of which is nonbacterial meningitis.
So, what we thought was going to be a super quick in and out day, ended up being an 8 hour day with a very long infusion, frequent monitoring, and a few days of monitoring afterwards. Everything ended up going fine, just always something around here!
Long story short, due to patient 0 in MD, there have been exposure issues, let's say...it's much more of a nightmare than that, but we will leave out the details.
During the first month of maintenance they do a mid point blood check just to make sure everything was ok. So it was supposed to be a quick day. The week before they checked Cooper's IGG serum which is supposed to tell them his antibody level to fight infection. They didn't expect this to be low as they normally see a low level on kids who have a much more intense chemo regimen.
Essentially, they check this because chemo regimen's for kids often wipe out your immunities and also wipes out a good amount of your vaccines that you have when you're a baby. Kids going through treatment can't be revaccinated until 6 months post treatment, so they check the IGG serum. Well Coop's came back low, so they needed to infuse the immunoglobulin, which is what patients get when they are exposed to the measles. IGIV is a pooled donor sample of antibodies, so it comes with side effects, one of which is nonbacterial meningitis.
So, what we thought was going to be a super quick in and out day, ended up being an 8 hour day with a very long infusion, frequent monitoring, and a few days of monitoring afterwards. Everything ended up going fine, just always something around here!
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