I had a bit of déjà vu this
week. If you’ve been following my story,
you may recall the start of my "Sed Rate Saga" -- my hesitation to get my blood drawn back in November and the
immediate call from my doctor’s office after my lab results came in because my
inflammation was high. That’s what
prompted my switch from Enbrel to Humira to treat my rheumatoid autoimmune
disease (aka, rheumatoid arthritis). I
was told to try Humira for one month, as an every other week injection, then to
get my labs done again. After a month of Humira, I felt no different. Not
necessarily any worse, but not better, either.
So, I kind of wanted to play a guessing game and try to predict what my
sed rate would be (sed rate, or erythrocyte sedimentation rate [ESR] is a
marker of inflammation). My labs from
November revealed a sed rate of 41.
So, I went to get my blood drawn
on Monday, figuring my sed rate couldn’t have changed too much from last
time. On Tuesday—again, less than 24
hours from when I had my blood drawn—I got a call from my rheumatologist’s
office. My sed rate was still high, and
according to the nurse had held steady at 41.
I haven’t seen the paperwork to verify that it really is exactly the same as it was two months
ago…but it really wouldn’t surprise me.
At any rate, this means that Humira is not working as well as we’d like –
in fact, it’s not working any better than Enbrel was. What’s interesting is how well my sed rate
seems to correspond with my symptoms.
Being the nerd that I am, I decided to chart out the data that I have of
my sed rate over time, with some annotations:
At any rate, because my inflammation
is still high, I will be upping my dose of Humira so that I will now take
weekly injections. This week was
supposed to be an “off” week; but, instead, I will be taking my next injection
tomorrow. I was told to give this weekly
therapy three weeks, and if I’m not feeling better after that to call the
doctor’s office. I have an appointment
scheduled for March, but if the Humira doesn’t kick in in the next few weeks,
the doctor wants to see me sooner and discuss switching to a different class of
biologic drugs (the only ones I have tried work by targeting a protein involved
in immune function called TNF-α; there are other drugs that target different
components of the immune system).
I have some mixed emotions about
this. When I started Humira, I was kind
of under the impression that I should be doing it as a weekly injection since I’m
taking as a monotherapy, rather than combining it with methotrexate. So, that switch doesn’t really surprise or
bother me. What scares me is that I have
only three weeks for my body to get in gear, or we’ll be looking at a whole new
class of drugs—to which I have zero idea how my body will respond. I don’t really want to go that route, but I
know I need to do what it takes to keep my disease activity under control and
to try to halt the progression. I also
am feeling very grateful toward my doctor right now. I appreciate the fact that he actually tends
to want to be more aggressive in treating my disease than I do (!) – and he is
not willing to let me stay on a drug that is ineffective, when there are other
things we can try. All I can do for now
is pray that Humira kicks in strong, and soon!
