Hi everyone.
My patches are "patching" meaning that they are working right now. It doesn't get rid of the underarm pain, just makes me not care. It works for me.
I had blood drawn earlier this week and lo and behold, my counts were slightly low. I find this bizarre because they are considerably lower than right after chemo. However, the counts are just below the normal range so it's not a cause for concern. Can you tell I don't care too much?
In answer to Sue's post: about half way through radiation it's typical to get blood work done. What I didn't know until the vampire came at me with 2 tubes (are you reading this, Walter?) is that it's a thorough blood workup in conjunction with the regular smaller vial for counts. My guess is they're checking me for mets, but I'm not thinking about that. They're checking something or else I might get annoyed that they took so much :)
The hip and back pain is chemo "algia" something or other. I can't remember which algia it is. It's now pretty much under control, courtesy of my trusty patches. Fentanyl to the rescue. I do hope this is just a right now kind of thing. I can't be this gimpy all the time. I just don't even want to think about that.
I did find out today that they are almost done frying me to a crisp in 5 areas. 3 more treatments will be directed at the underarm, nodes and lower breast areas. The next 8 treatments after that will blast the boob directly at the tumor site. I'm at 22/25 right now for this first round of treatment. You know, I love Dr. A - he's great. And I love how he's holding true to form with all my other Docs with only telling me what I can handle at a time. It was so funny today. I think the nurse thought I was going to go postal when I heard about the additional 8 directed at the tumor site. Fentanyl doesn't make one go postal; it makes one go to sleep.
I gotta admit, I'm damn proud of myself for not needing something to calm my nerves through this whole thing. I'll give credit to Billy for that, and my girls for keeping me focused on what's important - my family.
Pancakes for dinner. Yum!
2 comments:
Actually not much was said to me what would happen during radiation other than I am assigned to machine number 4 and be there every day at 9:25. They did read a list of long term side effects.I see the doc weekly but no blood was taken nor did they give me advice as to skin care or diet concerns (like do I eat antioxidants while they are doing oxidative damage to my cells?) During chemo, they always took 2 tubes of blood for my counts, which I thought was alot given that I was anemic-hey just take what you need.
I do hope all those myalgia, neuralgias go away soon.I assume this was Taxol's last gift to you. As for the dreaded mets, they wouldn't show up at multiple places at once.
It's pretty easy doing radiation and since you're doing the 3 weeker thing, I'm not sure if they'll have you go for blood halfway through. I did believe it strange when I mentioned to the nurse that I was having bloodwork done and she didn't want a copy of my counts. Then these became an issue when I met with the Doc today and couldn't remember the exact WBC number.
Who knows?! I do know it's typical for them to monitor you even after treatment regularly for a year or more. I'm trying to get all that (and oncology visits too) right in my brain as I step closer to the finish line here.
My oncologist told me he's all for me doing the antioxidant thing but I need to wait until chemo and radiation are complete. So take from that what you will. He's a stand-up kinda guy so I do trust his judgment - just look at my Mom.
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