Kim, fwiw, I had amifostine by IV--but it was actually an injection into the IV tube that went into my port--preceeded by extra hydration-- for most of my IMRT treatment and had no problems. Other places they administer it by subcutaneous injection. They did monitor my blood pressure carefully both before and after and the rest is much as Gale said (the trickiest part in some ways was the timing thing and being sure the rad machine was running on time since sometimes they thought it was at the front desk of rad. medicine but then when I got over there, it would turn out there was a delay. The rad technicians were very good at actually getting me in ahead of other people waiting, though, the once or twoce that that happened).


I took amifostine for 24 of the 33 days of rad. Almost every day I took it, it ended up making me vomit at some point either right before or right after radiation. There were a few days when I was lucky enough to just feel nauseated. Almost 5 months out, I have some issues with drymouth but I do have some saliva. I'm not sure how much of that is from the amifostine and how much from the IMRT.

I also didn't have anything in my mouth to hold my tongue in place. I wondered about this because I'm not sure it was always in exactly the same place--but it's not like it could move around that much either, the way the mask fit. Anyway, the folks from Roswell Park didn't seem to think it was necessary--I hope they were right!