Day 1 Monday 14 September 2015_treatment begins

Admission day and I'd been asked to come in for 09:00 to get my bloods taken,  the results of which would need to be reviewed by the doctors before dosing of Lemtrada could start (the nurses warned it was going to be a long day!). I was given a bed and basically settled down to try and get used to the concept of living here until Friday.

Somebody else was also there to start Lemtrada the same day a me but she thought she might have been suffering from a urine infection. Just a word of warning, I don't think they will start Lemtrada with current/ongoing UTI ... as this lady found out se was sent home after a lot of waiting with a 3 day course of antibiotics and no Lemtrada start that day. I myself had needed to get various appointments with a urologist to confirm that they didn't think I was suffering from recurrent UTIs as I do have recurrent discomfort but mostly without any proven bacterial growth (had just been stuck in a cycle of everyone thinking it sounds like a UTI so passing antibiotics my way). I have started taking D-manose and this has relieved a lot of discomfort.

Anyway back to the point of Lemtrada, at 15:00 I got confirmation that blood and urine results were OK to start Lemtrada and an IV infusion of 1g Methylprednisolone (steroids) was started, to last 30 minutes. I was given some other meds in preparation for the Lemtrada dosing including 1g paracetamol, anti viral (Aciclovir 200mg), anti histamine (Chlorphenamine  4mg) and anti sickness (Cyclizine 50mg). I started Lemtrada infusion straight after the steroids at 15:30. I had a headache develop about 30mins into the lemtrada infusion, but the headache was mild and stopped by 18:00. The best advice I could give when having Lemtrada infusion is to just sit back and relax as much as possible, I didn't want to make my mind to busy with waiting for the worst to happen.

By 22:00 I think I had some warm flushes on my face and forehead but I didn't think it was warm to touch, probably because of the steroids anyway. An that was all the excitement for day 1! I was relieved that it seemed so easy and hardy any side effects to note!