So what was the dexamethasone thing about last night? Here’s the story.
During my first round of chemotherapy I took a three-med cocktail. One of the meds was dexamethasone, a corticosteroid. It helps the other drugs work better, and also seems to program cancerous myeloma cells to die on their own, which is a handy attribute. But one of the side effects is sleep disruption. For the first few weeks, it had no effect. But then it started disrupting my sleep on the day I took it. Then for a couple of days. Then all the time. Then even more. It was a pain in the ass, but for the most part kept under control with sleeping meds that varied over time.
Now I’m on a second round of chemo, and it’s not working as well as we’d like. So a couple of weeks ago we added dex to the mix. It was half the dose I was taking last year, so I was hopeful the sleep disruption would take a long time to show up and would be milder than before. No such luck. Perhaps the first round created a heightened sensitivity to it? In any case, on the very first day I was up until 2 am. Hmmph. But maybe that was just a placebo effect I had talked myself into.
Again, no such luck. It’s a weekly dose, and I took the second one on Saturday morning. I didn’t sleep at all that night. Nor was I tired at all. In fact, kind of buzzed. I stayed awake all day Sunday, too. But last night I fell asleep normally and slept for nearly nine hours.
So how will this play out going forward? No telling. I’m in terra incognita. If it stays like this, it’s not really a big deal. I’ll just have a sleepless but otherwise pleasant night once a week. If it gets worse, though, I’ll have lots of sleepless nights and start to feel like crap. We’ll see! I’d just as soon not get back on the sleep meds, so hopefully it doesn’t get worse. Unfortunately, I suspect that’s a forlorn hope.
