how does one get pneumonia on ivig?
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July 7, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I’ve been having chest pain and fatigue since I fell skiing on April 1st. I had started relapsing in Feb, but had just started an increase of IVIG back to 3 times per month at 45 gms. I had decrease because of good health in Jan to 40gms/ 2x’s a month. ( Loading dose for me is 40×4)
The chest pain continuned through the rainy spring. It included a trip to the ER after a seizure that caused increased pain and low O2 saturation on June 19th.
As of last wk, I am getting ivig weekly at 45 gms until I get back to the strength I had last year before we began decreasing. Also as of last week I got dx’ed with pneumonia with ” increased nodual in lungs since 6/19 x-ray”. On 6/19 they told me in the ER that my lungs were fine and I had muscle inflammation, take NAID’s.
OK, the high fevers have broken, and all I want to do is sleep, and breathing is getting much easier, Thank God! And depression of the past month has lifted…still I want to sleep cuz I am healing and not coughing as much and am really tired from months of compromised breathing. Somethign abt having noduals developing in my lungs did not lead to a rattle sound to Drs.
I just don’t understand why the ivig didn’t fight off the pneumonia.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Erin -
July 7, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Emily has gotten sick many times while on IVIG. I think it helps in the aid of fighting off germs but it doesn’t totally get rid of them.
I read awhile ago that pneumonia is actually common with CIDP’ers.
Just take care of yourself, get some rest & drinks LOTS of liquids.
Kelly
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July 8, 2009 at 5:23 am
There is only so much IVIg to go around in your body too – if it is fighting with your myelin-attacking antibodies there may not be much left to fight off other things. I recently went through a month long illness and it seemed like my weekly IVIg was going back and forth as to which one it was fighting. One day my cold would be worse, the next day it was better but my CIDP was worse, and back and forth. I’ve finally shaken the cold off now but the CIDP took a nose dive and I’m struggling to get back to where I was in March. And on top of that you are sick so your body wants to produce antibodies to fight off the illness – and our antibodies are unreliable in their targets sometimes. It seems like either a complicated mess or a delicate ballet of chemicals. :rolleyes:
Oh and as I have also recently found out – that good old IVIg will go and attack other things too – that’s how we found out about my skin cancer. A couple of days after my treatment the IVIg would make its way to my skin and start attacking the cancer. It took me awhile to realize that wasn’t your typical IVIg rash but in the meantime the IVIg was busy keeping the cancer from spreading. I subsequently read a couple of articles talking about IVIg incidentally keeping cancer from becoming metastasized.
So it’s busy little stuff in there cruising around finding out what’s wrong and going to work on it. But there is only so much labor in that workforce and I don’t think anybody really knows how IVIg works to begin with. If we knew that then perhaps we could do a better job adjusting dosages and treatment schedules so there would be enough to go around for all the ills in our bodies. :p
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July 14, 2009 at 1:01 pm
[B]IVIG Is an immune suprressant. It does not prevent any illnesses or cure illnesses either. If it was boosting the immune system the blood cells would start attacking you again and cause more damage to your nervous system.[/B]
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