Drop Day Plus Five, Something New

It has only been five days, but so far Andy is doing fine with the change in steroid dosage (now 30mg daily).  The new issue is that for the first time, he is experiencing some steroid withdrawal symptoms.  Exciting, isn't it?  It's really not a surprise, now that we think about it, but he's not a huge fan.  We've talked to his team and depending how the next weeks go, they might elect to slow his taper even further in the future, reducing by smaller increments each time.  

He continues to have difficulties with some pesky symptoms.  It is often hard to discern whether it is current disease/inflammation, damage that is permanent, or side effects from the drugs.  We'll continue to monitor him, and by that, I mean that I'll be uncomfortably staring at him all the time and asking him how he feels approximately four hundred and sixty-seven times each day.  He's so thrilled to have me around.  

Next on his to-do list will be having another lumbar puncture on Monday, 03/29/21.  After his first one in November, he had a spinal fluid leak which resulted in a terrible spinal headache and he had to lay flat in bed for a week.  It finally sorted itself out before we had to have it medically taken care of; that would have required more needles in the spine and various other unpleasantness.  Still, it was very physically and therefore also mentally taxing on him and he's not looking forward to a repeat.  It seems necessary though, as they are still working on ruling out some various cancers.  This time the sample will be sent to the Mayo Clinic for processing instead of our local labs.  We are hoping for positive results and an event-free procedure.