T + 37 Another Little Pill
I went to the transplant clinic on my own yesterday and on the whole everything is going well, my haemoglobin is holding around 10.4 and my platelets have recovered to normal limits. My neutrophils are staying around 1.2 but one of the drugs I take, the anibiotic septrin, is known to suppress them. My white cells are around 2.1 and again the ciclosporin is responsible in part for keeping these values low.
The doctor has been checking my blood pressure each week and noting it was a little high, I also took along my own readings that I have been doing during the week. This increase is almost definitely caused by the ciclosporin I am taking so he decided to start me on a low dose (5mg) of a blood pressure drug called Amlodepine . I had some of this when I was in hospital and it was fine. It's known to work well with reducing blood pressure rises caused by ciclosporin.
There is one main possible side effect which is swollen ankles caused by fluid retention. Unfortunately this doesn't respond to diuretics so if this becomes a problen they will have to look at an alternative. Hopefully this won't be a problem for me but if I start to develop cankles then we'll have to take another look.
I was hoping to come off one of my drugs, acciclovir the anti-viral drug, as my leaflet said I would only be on that for 35 days after transplant, however the doc said that although I could come off it if I wanted there is some evidence to suggest that it helps protect against getting shingles .
Since I don't have any side effects from taking acciclovir I've decided to stay on it for the time being.
The doctor has been checking my blood pressure each week and noting it was a little high, I also took along my own readings that I have been doing during the week. This increase is almost definitely caused by the ciclosporin I am taking so he decided to start me on a low dose (5mg) of a blood pressure drug called Amlodepine . I had some of this when I was in hospital and it was fine. It's known to work well with reducing blood pressure rises caused by ciclosporin.
There is one main possible side effect which is swollen ankles caused by fluid retention. Unfortunately this doesn't respond to diuretics so if this becomes a problen they will have to look at an alternative. Hopefully this won't be a problem for me but if I start to develop cankles then we'll have to take another look.
I was hoping to come off one of my drugs, acciclovir the anti-viral drug, as my leaflet said I would only be on that for 35 days after transplant, however the doc said that although I could come off it if I wanted there is some evidence to suggest that it helps protect against getting shingles .
Since I don't have any side effects from taking acciclovir I've decided to stay on it for the time being.
Comments