Time table for improved health?

[undersiege]

I will finish with tx Fri,will finish with riba fri, and with this heat and the tx needless to say I feel pretty bad. My HGB is 9.9, and upon completion  how soon should I start feeling better.

[babs824]

congratulations to u! i felt better the moment i swallowed the last riba and have gotten better each day.i finished late february and was back to normal except for hair by june. hair is back but finer now and i have returned to normal in every way. so very grateful. good luck to u!
ps. hemoglobin took a few weeks maybe 3 to be normal

[his3707]

Great news on finishing treatment.  No easy feat and quite a commitment!   So A big congratulations to you!   Hope you get to feeling better every day.  I plan on joining a gym like 24 hour fitness for a while to help with recovery since I havnt been able to do a lot of real exercise while on treatment.  Im hoping that will speed recovery and restore my energy.  I want to look as healthy  as I know Im going to  feel for the rest of my "mature" years..  

[researchmonkey326]

That's wonderful - Friday is just a few days away.  I'm sure just not having to choke those pills down daily will make you feel better immediately.

[Junebug812]

I finished tx May 19th. I feel great now. I still have itchy skin and my lungs are still a little funky, but my energy level is back, no headaches, my hair is growing back, and I've gained weight.

I was on Procrit during tx and had my last injection of it about 2 weeks before I stopped taking Riba. Looking back, I wish I would have had one more injection of Procrit at the end because I started to feel bad for those two weeks after my last Riba, I guess because I hadn't had Procrit in a while and my hgb was dropping again. It rebounded I suppose because about 3 weeks post tx I started to feel a little better. By July I was feeling much better. Now, August 3rd I'm almost there. I did a 1.5 hour hot Vinyasa class yesterday (ok, nearly killed me but I kept up!), and there is no way on hell or earth I could have even walked to that class 3 months ago.

I hope you start feeling better soon. Be patient, let your body adjust, take fantastic care of yourself physically, emotionally, and mentally (can you treat yourself to something?), and know that you did it!!!

Best to you,
June

[Mary4now]

agree with above, congratulations on finishing, and I love the feeling of no more drugs.

[oceanblue701]

When your hgb comes up to 10.5 and 11 you should feel much better. As it continues to rise and the feeling of exhaustion fades, you will have a good feeling even if you have continued side effects. Take multivitamins and eat high iron foods like red meats and green vegetables and food with folic acid. Iron and folic acid (a B vitamin found in green leafy foods, citrus fruits, and cereals) helps build red blood cells.
Just finishing and throwing out the twice a day med box i had for the riba was so satisfying, I felt better right away. But i did still have issues with sore joints and other things that took about a month for the worst to pass. After that it was a gradual return to feeling very good over time for me. You may be very different and bounce right back. I hope so! Good Luck and Congratulations!

[FlGuy]

Saturday.  Just knowing you're done will make you feel better.

[flcyclist]

Major congrats on finishing trt and hope you start feeling better as your Hgb starts coming back up.  

I hope you will continue to update how you're feeling in the coming weeks/months.   It would be interesting to learn how quickly your energy and fitness comes back.

Wishing you the best.

[joemc34606]

I did almost two years of interferon and infergen in 2007. I was feeling better right away, probably within 2 days after finishing it felt like all the drugs were gone out of my body. I was also 30 pounds lighter Im sure that helped. But everone is different. Good luck
Joe

[meakea]

Congratulations on reaching the end of your TX this Friday!!  I wish I had an exact answer for you but, unfortunately, recovery after treatment is just as individualized as the actual treatment.  Some people recover very quickly and others take much longer.

For me, just the fact that I was done with treatment gave me a sense of euphoria that carried me through the first week post treatment feeling pretty good but, after that wore off, I found myself dragging again for about the first month and then I started noticing great improvement from week to week and month to month.  I'm now 2 years post treatment and feeling great.  

My best advice is to enjoy the fact that you are finishing treatment and don't expect too much of yourself initially.  The human body does need time to adjust and recover; no matter how good of shape we were in prior to treatment.