This past week has been up and down for me. Coming off my last treatment of A/C chemo, I was feeling better than I've felt since I started chemo. First week was good, second week was good, and I hoped third week would be good. Last Friday started well when I got a call from my Rheumatologist around 4pm, telling me he had checked in with some high mucky muck of medicine at U of M medical school and they felt it would be ok for me to resume taking my Enbrel. I've never been so excited to stick needles in me! So, I dosed up that night, and was already feeling less swelling in my knees the next day. Over the course of the week, I can definitely feel an improvement in the affected joints, but I'm still having pain in my left knee and hip, and my right ankle is a bit stiff. I did cut down to taking one Celebrex during the day to help with walking and I'm still taking the prednisone, but I'll have to wean off that gradually to avoid any problems with my adrenal glands. I'm hesitant to make too many changes before starting the next round of chemo on Monday.Saturday we had some friends over and I felt good enough to hang out with them and cook dinner. It was nice to feel normal. I ended the evening with a little tickle in the back of my throat but I was hoping it was a small allergic reaction to the wool yarn we were admiring that evening. Sunday I laid low, I'm still having to recover a little more from high energy days.
Monday morning I woke up with full on sore throat that I developed sometime in the middle of the night. Being the dutiful chemo patient I took my temperature and it came back 100.6. DRAT! 100.5 is the magic number for calling the Oncologist no matter what day or time. I really did not want to make the call. Of course they wanted me to come in and get a Strep test (negative) and do another CBC to check my white counts. I was at 0.7 on Thursday, and when they finally got mine back they were at 0.3, which is not high enough to fight an infection on my own. So, I got to get two more blood draws for cultures and hooked up via my port to IV antibiotics. 4 hours after we went in, I was back at home with a 10 day script for Levoquin giant horse pill antibiotics. More drama than I expected when I woke up that day. It's strange that something that seemed so minor could end up causing me all sorts of problems because my immune system is so comprised. The IV seemed to work out ok, because I woke up Tuesday feeling better, no fever, just the scratchy throat again. Wednesday I had to go for labs again and I was surprised that my white count was lower still 0.25, because I was feeling fine. Now I'm wondering if taking the Enbrel on Friday could have impacted my counts. I certainly don't want to bring that up and have them put the cabosh on my taking it.
Thursday I was designated driver for my hubs who went in to get the vein in his leg re-routed. It was an in-office procedure thankfully, but they dosed him on Valium, so he was not in shape for driving. Having this done lets him get off the blood thinner Coumadin, which is a good thing, and hopefully will prevent further clots in that leg. He spent 6 days in the hospital last February because he ended up with a small clot in his lung and a bigger one in his leg. We'd both like to avoid a recurrance of that! He's got some small incisions and a compression stocking on his leg, so we are both walking around a little funny this week.
Comparatively speaking, I'd consider the last cycle to be the best so far, even with the few bumps in the road this week. At the beginning of Chemo, I was fully expecting to feel my worst at the end of it, so it's a nice surprise to come out of the first round feeling mostly normal. I'm halfway through the worst of my chemo! I'm starting my next 2 drugs on Monday - Taxotere and Herceptin, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these will be easier than the first two.
The week after Thanksgiving, I have an appointment with the boob doctor. and I think I will be starting to do fills in my tissue expander to get ready for reconstruction surgery sometime next year. I definitely have some thoughts in my brain about all that, but I haven't managed to sort it out enough to write about just yet. Right now there is so much uncertainty about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, I am just trying to focus on today. Today, I have laundry to do, and the nice thing is, that I'm actually feeling good enough to do it.
Feeling better after chemo is the best feeling better ever!
ReplyDeleteSo sorry you had the infection, but it seems it was caught in time and did not cause you too much difficulty.
I am struggling with knee and hip pain, too. I can so relate. It is hard to have to deal with that on top of everything else! Otherwise, I would be feeling pretty good!
Love the quote.