Karen's Experience
Karen, a YCS board member, submitted the following experience about her
husband Mark:
Mark tolerated rituximab very well. We found that he was very sensitive
to the full dose of Benadryl, however, which is given to prevent reactions.
The nurses started giving him the half dose of Benadryl (either for rituximab
or for blood transfusions) because he was sometimes kind of hard to wake
up at the end of the infusion, which was at least a couple of hours long.
That worried the nurses as well as me. Thankfully, the half dose of Benadryl
seemed to reduce the likelihood of reactions while allowing him to wake
up more by the end of the infusion.