Define High Dose

Cindy’s consolidation chemotherapy this week  involves receiving “high dose” cytarabine, also known as AraC.  

What does high dose mean? Good question.

Her consolidation doses of cytarabine are 4500 mg/m2, as in per square meters of body mass. Her induction dose of the same drug was 200 mg/m2.  So “high” in this case is 22.5 times higher than the induction dose!  Kinda like being BLASTED, right?

Now induction was continuous, 24 hours for seven consecutive days whereas the consolidation doses are 3 hours twice daily for three days, each separated by a day.  Those days this week are Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

For example, this week’s dose days are Monday, 3-6 p.m. than 3-6 a.m. (Tuesday) followed by an off day from 6 am Tuesday until the next dose begins at 3 pm Wednesday (today), etc.  Get it? Me neither but that's the best I got.

Each chemo dose day begins with two “pre-meds:” Decadron (12 mg/m2, once each chemo day), a steroid for nausea prevention that also increases body’s tolerance of chemo and Zofran (8 mg/m2, before each chemo dose) also for anti-nausea.

Compared with the month-long induction phase when Cindy was ever-weary so the time moved along thanks to frequent visitors and needing to sleep often, these first couple days have dragged along since Cindy is feeling better so far. Whether the shorter (3-hour) duration of the cytarabine doses this week will be more tolerable than the continuous (24/7) dosing during infusion remains to be seen.  We’ll let you know.

Stay tuned and, of course, keep praying.

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Photo by Greg Leaman on Unsplash