My mother has been on Eprex for a couple of years and responds well to it. However, her specialist wants her to inject either weekly or every other week. She needs to check her hemoglobin weekly to make sure it isn’t too high (so that the injection doesn’t push her hemoglobin up into the risky zone), then decide whether to inject.
The problem is that after one week, her hemoglobin is generally still too high for her to be able to inject according to his cut off and then starts to plummet. She seems to experience a sharp drop in mood and energy that is due not only to the drop in hemoglobin but the withdrawal from the Eprex. She then needs to wait a full week before injecting again.
So she is stuck in an exhausting rollercoaster of mood and energy. And exhausting weekly trips to the blood lab at a downtown hospital.
It seems to me this could be moderated either by reducing the dose of Eprex so that she could safely inject more frequently. Or by allowing her to inject on a more flexible schedule, e.g., every 10 days. Her specialist does not appear to be open to either approach. I’m guessing it may be because he is concerned his elderly patient may lose track of her injection schedule. (She is in fact cogent and very well organized.)
Has anyone taking Eprex (epoetin) succeeded in working with their physician to optimize the frequency or dosage of the injections?
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