Pembro / Immuno Rash

Diagnosed with breast cancer Triple negative and inflammatory breast cancer
1

Hello,

I have had two treatments out of my first cycle of Paclitaxel/Carboplatin (weekly) and Pembro (3 weekly) and then the Zoladex injections too. So only one Pembro. Due my next chemo tomorrow.

All was going okay, a few side effects but manageable… until this weekend. Ended up in A&E with a severe itchy rash covering all over my body with swollen lips/ears/fingers. I am getting treat with a week long course of steroids and antihistamines which I presume will delay chemo. It was all very stressful as I couldn’t get through on the helpline and nearest A&E is 45 mins away :disappointed: The Oncology ward was full so I was in A&E for the duration. The anxiety has cranked back up to the max!

My question are:
Has anyone else experienced this?
And, if so, found a way to continue on the immunotherapy?

34 with TNBC. Feel like I pinned a bit of hope on the “wonder drug” that is Pembro/Immuno and now they’re not going to let me continue. It’s assumed to be the pembro causing it.

Thank you in advance x

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2

I had a rash with pembro after the 3rd treatment. Not as bad as yours, and treated with topical steroid cream, emollient and antihistamine. I was able to continue with pembro. However a couple of cycles later I had a larger scale ‘adverse event’ with an acute kidney injury, thyroid and lung damage. I had to stop Pembro at that point. I was hugely disappointed as I felt pembro was my only hope (metastatic TNBC), but found it had significantly reduced my mets - I just had 2 in my liver. 4 months later the mets remained dormant and I was able to have them ablated and am now in remission. Unfortunately I am still living with the consequences of the immunotherapy related adverse event. I have no proof of this but logically there has to be a correlation between pembro allowing your immune system to do a good job on the cancer, and it also leading to these adverse events. Hope you are ok.