Category: medical

Blank

On By huntersmumIn medicalLeave a comment

It’s been a while….

I don’t know what to write. I feel…a bit blank.

We’re in limbo land again. Waiting for news on a surgery date *. Waiting for news on the NICE/NHS England decision.

And in the meantime, even in a world where I am used to seeing dead or dying children on my Facebook feed, it has been an out of the ordinary week. Seven MPS children have passed away in one week. Seven families are now looking at an empty space where their beloved child was.

I didn’t know any of the families personally – most were living with MPS III, so I didn’t have as much contact with them – yet I have seen photos of some since my early days on the Facebook group. Each death hits our community hard and they will be mourned around the world.

There are still families fighting on though. Families who need the hope of a cure and the knowledge that future treatments will help their precious children.

The government’s own Rare Disease Strategy, published in 2013 states it should “ensure no one gets left behind just because they have a rare disease”. This is one thing I believe they could get right. If you haven’t already, please consider signing this petition to help it happen.

 

* We did get some slightly better news about Pudding’s clinical trial. Last week I was concerned that we had had ten months of wasted blood tests, hospital trips, and so on. Ten months of normal life being interrupted by medical stuff that we have forced him to submit to. However, having checked his CT scans the neurosurgeon confirms that although the portacath is now in the wrong place he believes that Pudding will still have been receiving  at least some of the dose in a roundabout way. He won’t be given another dose though until the portacath has been revised.

 

An end to hope?

On By huntersmumIn medical8 Comments

I like being right. Most of us do, don’t we?

Yet there have been a few too many times in the last few years where I have hoped, desperately hoped, that I was wrong.

When our paediatrician first mentioned mucopolysaccharidosis to us, I of course googled it. I saw pictures of other children with this progressive disease and I read the symptoms and I knew this was the answer as to why my Pudding was not reaching his development targets. I hoped I was wrong, but I was right.

He started on weekly enzyme replacement therapy to halt the build up of waste products in his body and we gradually got used to our new normal.

They checked his DNA to see whether he was likely to have the severe form. I had done my reading and I knew that those on the milder end of the condition rarely had development delay. I watched my son having reactions to this new enzyme in his body, I tracked every struggle and his difficulties gaining new skills. Deep down I knew that he had the severe form that meant a gradual loss of skills – the ability to walk, talk, even to swallow. And death in his teenage years. I hoped I was wrong, but I was right.

Pudding got on a clinical trial for a new form of the enzyme to help his brain. It has already halted the disease progression in a number of boys and we knew it would give our son a chance at life again. The drug is delivered by a special portacath that lies just under his skin and connects to the space around his spinal cord. For a while now I’ve been worried that this wasn’t functioning properly and a CT scan confirmed it this week. The dose hasn’t been getting to where it is supposed to. I hoped I was wrong, but I was right.

Yesterday I thought we were facing another surgery to fix this and I was devastated but today my fears are much worse. Today I heard that from the 1st April, at incredibly short notice, a cost-effectiveness threshold is being brought in by NICE and NHS England for orphan drugs (the name given to drugs that are developed for ultra-rare diseases like MPS). So even after Pudding’s port is fixed, even if the trial has all the data it needs to show success, even if it receives approval by the European Medicines Agency, someone in a suit will decide – based on limited patient numbers and data – whether my son will receive a life-saving medicine or whether we will watch him gradually be taken from us, skill by slowly-disappearing skill.

I have got through the last year by refusing to believe my son will die, and now even that is being taken from me. Writing this has been so difficult as the computer screen keeps disappearing behind my pesky tears that won’t stop coming.

This is not just our story but the story of any family who has been devastated by rare disease. A life-limiting illness is hard enough to deal with. Yet knowing your loved one has a life-limiting illness for which there IS a treatment available which you may not access is harder still.

I hope that if enough people write to their MP in the next few days we can get this decision paused until the impact on families like ours can be properly assessed and considered. Please, please, please prove me right this time.

Update: I have spoken to the office of my MP this morning (Julian Sturdy, York Outer) and he will be making representations to NICE, NHS England and the Department of Health on our behalf. Thank you so much to everyone that has already shown their support. The more MPs that do this, the better.

Further information:

MPS Society press release

Information from the Genetic Alliance

Infusion day

On By huntersmumIn medical5 Comments

Another Friday, another infusion.

A few people lately have been asking about Pudding’s treatment, so I decided it’s time for a blog post about it! Hunter Syndrome means that he is missing a particular enzyme that goes by the snappy name of iduronate-2-sulfatase. The enzyme would normally clear away waste sugars once they have been used by the body. Without it, the waste sugars build up and cause all sorts of problems. So every week, Pudding gets an infusion of synthetic enzyme to remove the waste and keep things working. This is called enzyme replacement therapy or ERT.

For the first few months we had to travel to Manchester for this every week, but now life is much easier with treatments at home.

8.15am – I put emla cream on the site of Pudding’s port. This is a device just under the skin of his chest that then feeds his infusion directly into one of the veins going to his heart. The cream means that it will be numb in time for the needle later.

8.30 – We drop T at school. Pudding objects because he wants to go in too. He doesn’t understand why Fridays are different.

9am – Our nurse arrives. Once Pudding has rushed to the door and said hello, he starts signing and saying ‘TV’. It’s good that he associates her with nice things, despite everything! She checks his temperature and gives him some pre-meds (paracetamol and citirizine) to stop any reactions to the treatment. He’s not keen on having medicine, so we have to catch him before he can run away.

9.30am – The nurse gets a sterile tray prepared and is ready to access Pudding’s port. I sit on the floor with him in front of me and wrap all my limbs around him to pin him down. As long as the TV is on he’s pretty good these days – gone are the times when we needed an extra person to help hold him. The nurse uses a special gripper needle to pierce his skin and go into the port. It is taped down so that it can’t move during treatment and has a thin tube attached to it that his medicine goes through. Before I can release him we also have to try and get a blood pressure reading. Sometimes we’re lucky and get it first go, sometimes it takes several tries before he stays still enough.

10am – We get the highly expensive, magic enzyme out of the medical fridge. The nurse adds it to a bag of saline so that it can be infused slowly into Pudding’s port. (If it was added in all at once it might cause reactions, and also would be more difficult for the body to absorb.) We have a small electric pump that pushes the enzyme and saline mix through the line at a set rate. When we first started home treatments this was held in a shoulder bag which Pudding refused to wear; we had to hover near him for the whole treatment ready to pick it up and follow him whenever he moved. Not ideal! Now we use a little rucksack – like most aspects of treatment, Pudding is not keen on us connecting the line and putting the rucksack on, but once started it doesn’t seem to bother him.

For the next few hours, Pudding is free to watch TV, play, go outside or whatever he likes within reason. We do have to be careful that the needle doesn’t get bashed as that might mean having to access again – the pump will beep to let us know if there’s a blockage in the line and the nurse checks it every so often.

Noon – A dose of ibuprofen.

1pm – More citirizine. By this dose he tends to give in quite easily and opens his mouth for it even without being asked.

1.50pm – The pump beeps to let us know that the saline bag has finished. The nurse puts on another bag to flush any enzyme that is still left in the line.

2.10pm – The flush is finished and we can disconnect the line and take off his rucksack. I have to get back into position on the floor for de-access. First there is an injection of heparin into the port to prevent any blood clots inside it before the next infusion. Then it’s time to remove the needle. Probably his least favourite part is having the dressing peeled off. More paracetamol. Another blood pressure. And we’re finally done. The nurse finishes off all the paperwork, and Pudding ‘signs’ it off on the tablet.

Just in time to head off on school run again.

It’s not the life I would have chosen for him of course but it’s our routine now. I enjoy having a chat with our lovely nurses and getting jobs done round the house. Pudding gets lots more TV than usual and sometimes extra snacks as well. And I am so grateful for this man-made enzyme pumping round his body and unravelling some of the effects of Hunter Syndrome.