Husband was on track to receive 6th pembro + 3rd low-dose ipi infusion this week, but his blood work and symptoms say "Stop!" All his "blood counts" (?) are low — hemoglobin, white blood cells, some other measurements. Doc says she hasn't seen this as a side effect of immunotherapy before — anemia alone, yes, but not everything blood-related down like this.
I have noticed his fatigue has been off the charts the last two weeks. He actually seemed relatively fine three weeks ago, but then took a nosedive two weeks ago — now he gets too tired to empty the dishwasher and has to lie down halfway through. He lies down all day except when I wake him to eat twice a day (he refuses breakfast — too tired and nauseous in the morning). No pain anywhere at all, mild shortness of breath on very mild exertion, erratic and sometimes very high heartrate. Blood pressure and oxygen saturation all seem great when they checked at the doctor.
So immunotherapy is cancelled this week. He is going to get a bone marrow biopsy on Friday to see if this is due to disease progression in his bones. He's also going to get a blood transfusion to help with his low hemoglobin and symptoms of fatigue and shortness of breath.
I'm not really sure what to expect from this. I did some searching on the forums and on Google but didn't find many results for this reaction.
Anybody have any experience? Research? Advice? Think this is still a chance it's just the immunotherapy kicking in, and not wildfire cancer again?
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