Strange monthly fever and some other symptoms

Joined
Feb 18, 2012
Messages
6
Location
St. Louis, MO
So... I'm posting this here mostly because the only thing I can correlate to a weird set of symptoms I'm having was the Cimzia shots I was taking.

I started on Cimzia in October last year, and was on 2 injections every 4 weeks (I believe a higher than normal dose, because I had already been on Cimzia once in the past). Things were going well, and my small intestine (I don't have a large one anymore!) was even showing some sign of slight improvement (it wasn't bad before, but it had some small issues).

But in June this year—and then again in July, and in August—I had a 4-5 day set of symptoms that would include severe fever in the evenings (In June, topping 103°F, July 103.6°F, and in August 104.3°F), and some other lighter symptoms (lower back pain, general lethargy, a little bit of feeling faint, and higher heart rate).

I went to the ER two of those three times, and talked a lot with my GI doctor (and general doctor).

We got every blood test in the book, two CTs, two MRIs, an ileoscopy, more blood tests, a few X-rays, etc. (and four COVID tests... those always cap things off with a bang as my nose stings for 30 minutes!).

Everything, pretty much, was negative, but my CRP was in the 50s (lowest I measured in the past three months was 17) and I had a few other random tests come back 'low positive' (like a lupus test).

Anyways, we finally got a Cimzia level test before my late August dose (it should be taken at 'trough' when less of the drug is in your system)—it's a specialized test that has to be sent to Mayo Clinic—and it came back showing I had tons of antibodies to Cimzia.

So I'm left wondering if my body could have been having some sort of delayed immune response to each Cimzia dose. The weird thing is the fever would come about a week or a week-and-a-half after each injection. You'd think I'd have more symptoms more quickly (even if it's not an allergic reaction).

Anyways, I'm posting this here on the off chance that someone else in the world has been on Cimzia, showed strange periodic symptoms like the fever I had, or had other kinds of severe inflammation?

(I also don't want to scare anyone off the drug... it apparently works great for many patients!)
 

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