The Latest Theory

I was at the cancer center this morning for my tri-weekly dose of Herceptin, the relatively new, relatively miraculous drug. One of the nice things about Herceptin is that, unlike traditional chemotherapy, it doesn't have those nasty, day-to-day side effects. It doesn't make your hair fall out, or cause you to puke, or wreak havoc with your digestive tract. A friend of mine, who took it for a year, memorably described it as "bland."

OK, it can cause cardiac toxicity, but that's both rare and reversible. (That's why I have MuGA scans every three to four months—to make sure my heart is a-pumping as it should be.)

Anyway, the nurse who treated me this morning asked how I was doing, and I told her that the joint pain was still keeping me company. I told her that I'd tested negative for Lyme disease, and for whatever tests one can do for lupus, and that my next step was to see a rheumatologist in a couple of weeks. She thought about it for a minute and then said something like, "You know, I think Herceptin has been reported to cause joint pain in a small number of cases."

She went off to look it up and came back a little while later with a printout in her hand. Sure enough, she was right. Down at the bottom of a two-page description of the drug was a paragraph that began, "Other adverse reactions . . . include arthralgia. . . ."

Arthralgia is the fancy medical name for joint pain.

In some ways, it would make more sense for Herceptin to be the culprit—unlike the deer tick, it has come into regular contact with my bloodstream for the past six months.

But that's just it—I've been taking it for six months. And the symptoms didn't start until three or four weeks ago.

I honestly have no idea what to think at this point.