Our first IVIg and feeling nervous, any advice?

My 3yr old is having her very first round of IVIg tomorrow and I am feeling very overwhelmed and scared for my little girl. She has had ITP for 19 months but up until this point we have only treated with steroids.

So to help me calm down and feel a little better I was hoping that anyone could share their advice or tips for making this as painless as possible for her. The doctor did mention that they might have to sedate her to get the drip in. Also, I was wondering what sort of side effects other children have had from the IVIg? My daughters side effects on the steroids are horrible so i am hoping it will be not so bad with the IVIg.

TIA,

Sarah

My main advice is to pretreat with Benadryl and tylenol. My 10 year old daughter always gets a headache and upset stomach about 2 days after but it seems better when they pre treat. Everyone is different - from my daughters second IVIG she maintained counts from 60-115,000 for about 6 months but then she dropped down. Hopefully this is the thing that may give your little one some high counts for a while!!

Hi sarah

your daughter has already had her IVIg by now - sorry that I did not read this sooner.

Hopefully everything will be okay. My daughter did not have any problems with the IVIg. She did start to react to it after several months, so they just switched the brand. I would give her Tylenol in the morning before we would leave as she did develope headaches, and they would give her Benadryl when we got there. The Benadryl is good because it does cause drowsiness, which could be a benefit for your little one.

It can be awfully scary - especially with a three year old - they are not always the easiest to deal with.

I hope everything goes (went) well.

Good luck.