Avastin

My first experience with avastin was only 4 days ago. I know someone of you can say that my review is not as others because I know nothing about this drug. Honestly 4 days were enough for me to understand that the treatment with avastin is really awful. I never had a similar treatment before, it was terrifying and painful. Before avastin, my doc injected me many other antibiotics but the worse started when it came to avastin. I don’t know how to describe this situation but when you feel the needle in your eye it’s not as terrifying as when you feel the avastin substance that spread all over you eye. The pain was terrible and insupportable. Some of negative effects started before 1 day after the injection. My eyes became red and I couldn’t see normally for 2 days. I felt like my eyes are on fire and when I close my eyes I felt a strange discomfort. This was the most terrible part because this discomfort while my eyes are closed created to me big sleeping troubles. Maybe it’s a normal effect of this drug, but for me was insupportable and I started to search another one. I decided to write this post just because I wanted to let you know about what happen after the avastin injection.

I have continued neuropathy in my hands and feet after I’ve been into full regiment treatment and now I’m taking avastin for the last 5 months. First things I have to mention about this drug and first words what comes in my mind when I think about this drug is: SEVERE joint and shoulder pains! They were horrible. I was taking a medication that should treat arthritis because of the avastin but then, that medication that should treat arthritis gave me high blood pressure. One problem in exchange for another I would say. I stopped everything that I was put on for arthritis and I went to a rheumatologist and asked him to give me a medication that doesn’t have risk of high blood pressure as a side effect. He gave me one and it helps me to lower the joint and shoulders severe pains. They were horrible initially but now I would say that are tolerable or moderate. The first medications I was taking for arthritis helped me and completely healed my joint and shoulders from the pains but the risk of high blood pressure issues was too high so I choose to have a moderate pain than to have risks of other diseases. I’m now trying to keep my medicines to the lowest level because as you can see, one medication treats one thing but gives you other issues and if you take another medication to treat those “other issues” you have even more issues. I’m now aware of liver damage. I’ll go and check my liver function levels regularly. With all the medications I’m taking now and I took for the last half a year I’m getting a real paranoid. Hope that all this will stop in few months as doctors said.

My mother is 40 and she was diagnosed with brain cancer about a year ago also in January. She has started to take the Avastin drug in October of the last year right after she found out that her spinal cord tumor has started to grow again. Actually the tumor is in her spinal cord but not in the brain so it makes her right leg weak. It affects her legs but especially the right leg. Obviously she had radiation and chemo and she had a surgery. It was in march. Doctors said that her tumor was shrinking but then in the middle of the summer they said that it started growing back again. Radiation and surgery wasn’t an option again. Doctors said that this drug avastin might work so that’s how she started the treatment in October of 2014. She was already having a chemo that is called now “Temodar”. The drug seems to help my mother but it’s by far not perfect. When she started to take Avastin doctors said that the tumor also started to shrink so it may seem that it’s good but actually it’s not because her symptoms only got even worse than they were before. I’m not a doctor and I do not understand why is that happening as her tumor is shrinking but… So… the conclusion is that the drug seem to help but side effects that it carry on are very bad. I guess that one can take the drug depending on how bad the side effects are. I think that extra care is needed when using this drug since it’s not a “simple” one.

I wasn’t expecting wet macular degeneration at all but it suddenly appeared! I’m now a 57 years old female and I have been taking shots of Avastin for the last 2 years. No doubt it really helps but only the first 3 or 4 treatments were really the most effective for this condition, the rest of them were kind of a maintaining status or something like that. I don’t really agree with just a “maintaining status” but… Anyway, I wasn’t feeling very well for quite a long time but I wasn’t really paying attention to that… for one or another reason. I finally decided that I really should see a doctor and once again, for one or another reason, I decided to visit a new doctor. When he saw my medical history he explained many reasons why I should not take Avastin anymore and even recommended to avoid using it if it’s possible. The first thing I did that day is some research about Avastin’s side effects and bingo. I was really having many of the negative sides that are listed and discussed related to this medicine. I don’t know why I never thought about it before but I never put my stomach issues, bad eye issues, skin issues and overall sick feeling on Avastin. I was feeling bad, ill and sick for months but I didn’t expected Avastin to have something to do with all that. Not so long ago I discontinued using this drug for few months and indeed I was feeling normal back again. My stomach and skin issues and overall feeling of sickness all suddenly disappeared. Yesterday I decided to have another shot of Avastin and guess what? All those symptoms (stomach, skin and sickness feeling) returned back again. I really doubt that all this is coincidence. Want to take this drug? Take extra care!

My mother was diagnosed with brain cancer at early stage. After we heard it, we all got scared, depressed and hopeless. I remember I was crying every night because I thought that soon I won’t see my mother alive anymore and this thing was killing me from inside. I never saw my father in such a bad mood. All our family was hardly dealing with it. First few months the doctor put her on some medications that didn’t work at all. The tumor was growing continuously. Some months later her doctor said that Avastin can help. At first we hardly believed him. Now, Avastin has stopped the progression of her brain cancer. The med cut off the nutrition that was feeding the main tumor and now her tumor has already shrunk by more than 70% after only 5 treatments. She says that she’s feeling much better. Avastin teaches us not to lose hope and to believe that everything will be alright. This med brought back our hope and we are infinitely thankful! I can now look at my mother without crying. Moreover, she experiences no side effects. She is very tired though, always. She gets tired very easy and she’s sleeping very much but this is something normal I guess, that’s why I cannot say it is a side effect.