Four treatments in...update

 I have had four treatments so far.  The main and only real side effect I have had is tiredness.  I have also been doing injections of mistletoe on my off days.  That means the schedule for mistletoe looks like this:

Monday--self injection at home

Tuesday--IV mistletoe

Wednesday--self injection at home

Thursday--IV mistletoe

Friday--self injection at home

The purpose of the injection at home is to boost the immune system.  It causes a immune response and I should get a skin reaction at the site of the injection.  The current dosage is so small that I have not had any skin reaction so far.  I have 2 more doses at this level and then my dosage goes up.  

The IV mistletoe includes high dose vitamin C.  Typically most people need 50 mg. of vitamin C.  While the vitamin C does not change your blood sugar, it reads on a glucose monitor as if it were sugar.  They prick my finger when I go in before treatment, and again after treatment.  They take the difference in the numbers and determine from there if you need more vitamin C.  Somehow, and I am not a science person, you need the numbers to be far enough apart to raise the oxidative level.  The first treatment they didn't check my numbers because the dosage was so low it wasn't anticipated to affect me enough.  The second time they gave me 50 mg.  My numbers were not far enough apart.  The third treatment, they gave me 62.5 mg.  Again, my numbers weren't far enough apart.  The last time they kept it at 62.5 and retested me.  This time my numbers were even closer than they had been the previous time with 62.5.  What that means, is that the next time they will be giving me 75 mg. of vitamin C.  This also means that instead of paying $220 per administration of the mistletoe/vitamin C, I have to pay $330 each time I go in.  On the other hand, I should not get a sniffle this winter! 

The other thing you should know about the mistletoe is that the IV mistletoe is at a much higher dosage than the injection.  The dosage I had by IV yesterday was 400 mg. The amount I inject myself with is currently 1 mg. I believe they want my IV to get up to at least 1000 mg of mistletoe and the injections up to 50 mg.  

As far as the future goes, I meet with my practitioner again on Tuesday.  I will then be discussing with her my options and costs as to what we will be doing once this set of mistletoe is over.  Until then...