When you suspect MRSA…

I was just looking at some info online about Cubicin, my poorly named but hopefully awesome new antibiotic. The heading of the website caught my eye: When you suspect MRSA cSSSI or bactermia—use CUBICIN first!

Well, in my usual headstrong style, I did not use Cubicin first. I like to rebel that way. It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got these days.

But now I am on Cubicin, because we not only suspect MRSA, we know it, and I’m back to playing by the rules and toeing the line. For now, anyway.

I’ve learned some things. That’s one thing I will say about this “cancer journey” — the education never stops. Just when I think I’ve got it all figured out and have “been there, done that” something new pops up and presents a whole new learning curve.

If someone had asked me last year if I could see myself administering IV drugs to myself at home, I’d have said nope, you’re whacked,  there’s no way that’s happening.

And yet, here I am, administering IV drugs to myself at home.

If someone had asked me last year if I could envision a breast cancer diagnosis, a bilateral mastectomy, nearly a month in the hospital, and not one but two teams of infectious disease doctors working to keep a wily infection and its friend MRSA at bay, I would have asked what they’ve been smoking.

Yet here I am, looking at that very scenario.

Life is funny that way. And by funny I  mean peculiar, because let’s be honest: there’s nothing funny about any of the things I just listed.

AstraZeneca markets this drug in the US. I’m not sure if Cubicin is the US name for the drug, but whoever named it must have been having an off day. It’s in the daptomycin family, which means precious little except that it adds another notch to my belt. If I were to list all the different antibiotics I’ve been on since May of last year, this post would stretch on and on. Suffice to say I’ve had just about all of them, from Azithromycin to Zyvox, in this long and winding road.

One thing on Cubicin’s website made me laugh: “CUBICIN (daptomycin) is indicated for complicated skin and skin structure infections (CCSI).” Yep, this is complicated all right. I don’t seem to know how to do this any other way. My friend Laura, the transplant nurse, laughs and says, “Nothing about your case has been textbook, my friend.” True, so true.

Cubicin’s website lists the requisite claims of awesomeness along with limitations and warnings. It’s not indicated to treat pneumonia, if you were wondering, nor is it effective for the treatment of left-sided infective endocarditis due to S. aureus. I’m not exactly sure what that ailment is, but I’m sure glad I don’t have it. I do, however, have a problem with the website’s use of  “due to” in that construction. Any monkey knows it should be “because of” as “due to” is a temporal phrase to denote time or expectation, not causation. Man, it bugs me when they get that one wrong.

Moving on.

While poorly named and with a glaring grammatical error on its website, Cubicin does have a lot going for it. Namely, the list of side effects is miraculously short. I’ve become well-versed in side effects of multiple drugs (again, part of the education I never knew I’d be getting and really would be just fine not ever receiving).

The worst side effects seem to be anaphylaxis and pneumonia, but other than that, we’re looking at muscle weakness (great, since I can’t exercise anyway why not speed up the atrophy?), peripheral neuropathy, and diarrhea. So if I don’t have an allergic reaction and get pneumonia from this drug, I’ll have weak muscles, some numbness, and be in the bathroom a lot.

That’s a very short list.

There are two things about this drug that are fantastic. Well, three things if you count the very short list of potential side effects.

It is administered once a day, not twice, and it doesn’t require an IV pole from which to hang. This means I’m tethered (literally) to it half as often and while tethered, have complete mobility. Last time I had IV drugs at home, they hung from a pole and I was forever getting tangled up as I tried to move from room to room with them.

I can forgive the less-than-exciting name for Cubicin.

Some of you have asked how this all works, so I’ll tell you. I’ve always wanted to answer viewer mail like David Letterman used to do (maybe he still does, but I don’t stay up late enough to watch him.). Here’s the deal: I have a needle in my port-a-cath that stays in for the duration of the IV therapy. If IV therapy lasts longer than 7 days, the nurses have to change the needle, so they yank it out and re-puncture me with a fresh one.

Not that I’m complaining, but the needle is rather fat, as it has to pierce not just my skin but also the plastic membrane of the top of the port. They call it a butterfly needle, but let me tell you, there’s nothing gentle or fleeting about it. I’ve had my port poked many, many times during this “cancer journey” and in fact, when it’s not in use, it must be flushed every 6 weeks, so off I go to the oncologist’s office to have the infusion nurses prep me like a HAZ-MAT victim, jab the butterfly through my skin, flush everything then yank the needle and patch me up with gauze and tape.

While I don’t mind going to Dr Darcourt’s office for port maintenance (it’s close, parking’s free, and he’s cute), I now understand why Dr Grimes wanted me to come to his office to get started on this round of IV drugs. That said, I will continue to assert that Dr Darcourt’s infusion nurses are better with the stick. Dr Grimes’s infusion nurse, she of the “oh, at least you get new boobs” comment, has a bit of the palsy and visibly shakes. So Shakey comes at me with the butterfly needle, and all I can think is please please please let her get it on the first try, and where is that cocktail waitress, anyway??

Ok, back to business. The port looks like this, but of course it’s under my skin. The thick white tube on the right is sewn into my jugular vein, and the purple part on the left lies just under my skin on the left side under my collarbone. And yes, you did read that right: the port’s tubing is sewn into the jugular vein. That’s how it can empty all the various drugs and dyes into the big gun for distribution throughout my body. When you’ve got an important distribution job to do, the jugular is your guy. Creepy, yes, but very effective and efficient.

So the port is under the skin tied into the jugular, the needle pierces both skin and port membrane, and a thin tubing is attached to the needle with a clamp and a connector cap that attaches to the bag of medicine. It’s maybe 8 inches long, and when I’m not using it, I tuck it in my shirt and go on about my day.

My supplies look like this:

Flashback to this past summer, when I had the first round of IV antibiotics at home. The supplies looked like this:

Much more complicated. I prefer the current version; downsizing is good.

The round balls in the new supplies photo are the “bags” of Cubicin, and I have saline syringes and heparin flushes. Gotta flush the port with saline before and after the drug infuses, to keep everything flowing, then shoot in the heparin after the infusion, to prevent any blood clots in the port’s nooks & crannies or in the tubing or God forbid in my body. The heparin is considered a lock, to keep the clots out.

Here’s the “bag” of Cubicin as it starts infusing. It’s chubby and round with a rod down the middle that helps indicate when the drug is all gone.

I can hold it in the palm of my hand while it’s attached to my tubing and while it flows into my veins. I can set it in my lap and read my book, or take it with me to drive carpool. If I didn’t still have the dreaded JP drains and were carrying my normal purse instead of the sling bag, I could stick it in my purse and tuck the thin tubing aside and go shopping. Sigh. That’s another life. Never mind.

This drug infuses in half an hour. Once a day. I think I’m in love. Last time I did vancomycin and cefapim via IV, it took nearly 4 hours to infuse twice a day, and I was stuck with the IV pole. This is way better, despite the utter lack of shopping. 

As it infuses, the bag starts to collapse and the rod on the inside becomes more prominent. One of the infectious disease nurses said that while the drug is plentiful, the rod looks pregnant, and as the drug depletes, the rod gets its figure back. Too bad the figure-reclaiming doesn’t work that fast in real life.

If you’re wondering how this little bag of wonders works without gravity (i.e., hanging from a pole), I can tell you: it’s pressure-driven. Ingenious. It also has a filter on the tubing that prevents any air bubbles from traveling through the tubing and entering my bloodstream. Last time around, we were warned against air bubbles as if they were the devil incarnate, and I stared at the drugs coursing through the tubing, waiting for my heart to explode, and not from happiness.

One day, when this “cancer journey” is finally over (it will end one day, right? right??), I can envision my heart being so filled with happiness that it might explode. One day.