So over the weekend the fevers got worse, culminating in my waking up at 102.9F at 3:30am Monday morning and having to awaken Carrie because I was shivering too hard to get the Tylenol in me. Monday morning I skipped my cancer meds dose and Monday afternoon we went into the cancer center for a full fever workup, which was interesting in itself–so many tests!–and it was decided I’d take a short hiatus from dabrafenib and trametinib to allow by body to catch up and cool off. It seems to be working, to the point that yesterday I was actually able to go into the office. And I’ve had intellectual conversations with different groups of people. Very nice.
I’ll go back on later in the week, after US thanksgiving. It may be a cyclical thing–that the Tylenol stops working after a certain number of weeks and I need to go off and reset. If that’s my pattern, I can live with it.
It’s also possible that the fevers and chills will go away after my body adjusts to being on the meds, but it’s a question of how long I can tolerate having the fevers and waking up with brutal chills.
Some people are also given steroids for this side effect, though I’m not really excited about being back on the ‘roids either.
In the meantime, I’ll be entering US thanksgiving mode shortly, which is what the people at the cancer center encouraged me to do.