I have a friend who suffers from juvenile arthritis and artificial hips and knees and gets a monthly IV to pump steroids into his system to help him stay mobile.
He has gotton this IV hundreds of times before with no incident, but today when he got it he suffered a very serious reaction, he turned bright red and couldnt breath for some amount of time, needless to say this scared the hell out of him and is no longer going to get it.
I got to thinking though, what would cause something like this to happen after he had gotten it no problem for years and years?
I then realized that he had been hanging around with some pothead kids at school and started smoking marijuana. Could the buildup of THC in his system have interacted with the steroids and caused the terrible reaction?
I am not a doctor, and I wasn’t there, but it sure sounds like an allergic reaction to something in the IV.
Allergic reactions can develop even to things you get every day. Basically, the immune system decides something is a dangerous invader and attacks in a manner that damages the body as well as the “enemy”. If that IS what is occuring, then it is highly unlikely he’d be given the same medication again anyway, as once this sort of reaction occurs subsequent exposures will usually result in even more severe symptoms.
It has nothing to do with him smoking marijuana - if it did, he would have turned red and had breathing troubles after toking, rather than during IV administration.
Could be something in the IV, could be the adhesive in the bandage, or the iodine they might have cleaned the site with (iodine would be an unusual choice for an IV, but stranger things have happened), could have been the laundry detergent the sheets on his bed are washed in - allergies (if that’s what this was) can be to anything, and can pop up out of nowhere. Only his doctor will be able to pinpoint and avoid the allergen in the future. This should not stop him from getting treated, but it is definitely something that should be identified.
The one thing I can guarantee you it* isn’t* is THC from secondhand pot smoke. Or even first hand. It just doesn’t work like that.
That would be my Ex-EMT take on it, possibly a medication error as well. We would probably need to know what specific meds he was recieving to do much more specific research WRT side effects or possible common errors.
Could be a reaction between the THC and the medication creating an unanticipated reaction. I would still lean more towards a med error than something this exotic.
not in my experience, we have latex free options, but latex is still the default
Sounds like an allergic reaction, could they have changed the med to a new and improved version? Either a new drug, or one that has a different buffer or perservative. sensitivity can result from repeat exposure to something that used to be benign
Huh. I wonder if it’s a regional thing. I’ve been in four hospitals in the Chicagoland area in the last four years and they’re all latex-free. I guess I assumed it was a standard of practice thing.
So yes, then, latex is a very common allergen, and even more so in someone who needs routine medical care - every exposure can increase the reaction. In a way, that would be good news - better switching gloves and tubing than to be unable to get his medication, right?
I’m just concerned about the “needless to say this scared the hell out of him and is no longer going to get it.” That makes me afraid the friend isn’t going to work with his doctor to figure out what happened and find alternate treatment. This medication is really important to his quality of life, and chances are good that there is something else that can help if he can’t continue this one. And it also makes me afraid that if it is something very very common like latex, the next time he has this reaction could be to something at home like a condom, rubber band or a band-aid, where there’d be no one around to monitor his airway.
On the issue of allergies coming and going, I can say from personal experience that you can definitely develop a new allergy where none existed before. I developed a penicillin allergy after having taken it from time to time for literally decades. “It happens,” said my doctor.