MDS: Symptom or Side Effect. Take 2

On July 17, I blogged about trying to determine the difference between symptoms, side-effects and imagination while undergoing these Vidaza treatments for MDS.

About that time (or maybe a little earlier—who can remember such things?), small red bumps appeared on my ankles and lower legs. They look like bug bites. They itch.

Mosquitoes? Spider bites from napping the basement? Lyme disease?

I wondered about all of those.

(Well, listen, it only took a small bit of imagination to see a circular pattern in those red bumps to decide Lyme disease could be a consideration.)

But, these bite-like oddities haven't gone away. Nor have they grown worse. They're just there.

So, I embarked the other day on some Web research, and came up with a skin condition called erythema. Initially, it seemed to fit the bill. Except that:

• it's purported to show up in patients taking Vidaza by IV, not injection
• most photos show it to be much more generalized and without the bumps; or with whole bunches of bumps.

Now I'm thinking, erythema?, probably not.

Of course I'll ask Dr. O tomorrow when she pokes into my bone marrow. But, it brings back into the spotlight a basic psychological conundrum:

• is it (whatever it is—itching, fatigue, discomfort, crankiness, lack of growing to be 6-feet tall) a side effect, a symptom or an imaginary figment?

I don't know. But not knowing isn't going to keep me from scratching the itchy little buggers. I'm keeping my fingernails at the ready.