Treatment (Day 15)

The sore arm from yesterday turned into an incredibly painful arm overnight. The feeling is similar to a dead arm. It seems that the sodium stibogluconate (and saline) was leaking into the tissue around the vein when I was feeling the pain on injection yesterday. It's clearly worked its way up the arm through the tissue giving me the dead arm today. Hoping it will subside soon. Not wanting to take any painkillers as I want to know that the cause of the pain is disappearing rather than just the pain itself.

Fifteenth dose this morning was fine (in right arm just above that painful cannula) but the cannula has been removed to let my right arm recover. So without a cannula today.

I am grateful that the side effects are no worse than the occasional bout of tiredness or headache--discounting leaking of the drug. I just hope that the wounds start healing in the next few weeks. The larger one looks like it has been for the last month or two anyway but that is not related to this hospital stay. Cutaneous leishmaniasis lesions do heal naturally. The reason for this systemic treatment is to prevent any further effects of leishmaniasis, i.e., more lesions or moving onto mucocutaneous or visceral forms.