Good morning! Hello Teri and a big hug and long overdue hello to Lori!

Teri, my husband had five rounds of Rituxan a year ago. Lori, can you believe it has been a year already?

He also had bendustamine with 4 of those rounds. I wanted to add to the possible reaction of the Rituxan. One of the symptoms of a possible reaction is getting cold. Val did get cold on his first round but nothing overwhelming. It was his second round where he got very cold, and oddly enough, his mid back started to hurt. They stopped his treatment, gave him the magic elixir and within 20 minutes he was back on track. He never had another reaction. Yes, apparently this is pretty normal and definitely routine for the nurses.

Because he was on both bendamustine and Rituxan it's difficult for me to say which one caused the side effects that he did have. All in all, he tolerated his treatments very well and I hope that you will too. As Lori knows from our previous writings, Mr. Crabby Pants did very well during his treatments. Crabby Pants because he couldn't eat rare steak, sushi, and some of the no-no's that he loves. His main side effect was fatigue, fatigue, fatigue. He had to stop treatment one session early because of his low white cell counts but he and his hematologist were in agreement that would be fine as the treatment was successful and his PET CT showed no evidence of disease. As Lori would say "he is unremarkable". He did have dry skin and an added strange "possible" side effect, that has been studied in Rituxan, and that is five squamous cell carcinomas on his forearm. All good now.

Val isn't a "typist" nor a big communicator so it's always me here. If you have any other questions please ask and I'll interpret for him. 🙂

Sending you good healing thoughts!

Sheri