Hi there
I aa new to the forum and would like some feedback from other members of the forum.
I finished 12 months of immunotherapy with pembrolizumab in February this year. During the treatment I had fatigue and thirst mainly but managed to complete the course.
However, I have just had 2 weeks in hospital with bad infections in the pancreas, gall bladder and liver. Suspicion at first was on gall stones being the cause, but a subsequent ultrasound scan showed no gall stones present.
The root cause has not been established but I was wondering if anyone else has had a late side effect to the treatment with a similar prognosis?
Robroy
Hi Robroy
I am not a member of this forum as I don’t have melanoma, but I am one of the Community Champions on the site. I tend to look out for posts mentioning pembrolizumab, as I was treated with it, and also had some challenges. As I am sure you are aware, the drug is in the class of drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, and it works by removing the checkpoint that is stopping your immune system from ‘seeing’ the cancer. Effects are systemic and can also happen for a while after treatment is stopped. It does sound like you may have suffered an immunotherapy related adverse reaction. My equivalent was to kidneys, thyroid and lungs and it happened about 5 months into my treatment, but it came on suddenly and needed a lot of management with steroids to resolve it. I hope they get you stabilised quickly and the drug worked well on your cancer.
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