Lovebuch family happenings

We checked the counts on Monday (yesterday) and I seem to be on the up-swing for platelets and white counts, but, oh so slowly. I'm still neutropenic and still below 20k platelets, but my counts are higher than I was most of last week. Now I'm at my nadir for red cells. This is typical they tell me, and red cells are the last to go and last to return. It does explain why I've been feeling more fatigued than normal, and why my apartment is all the sudden at 13,000 feet. I get winded going up the stairs in the building, and I take a few extra breaths every time I stand-up from my chair or couch. The team is intrigued why it's taken so long for my counts to recover, which reminded me of a common theme with blood oncology: how your bone-marrow responds to chemo is unique for each person and doesn't care about your mental or physical shape. It's tough not to take it personally, but the drugs affect people differently, and there is nothing you can do about it. It seem

I've spent this week mostly at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance clinic getting platelets, getting bone-marrow-stimulating shots, checking blood counts, and getting the daily chemo through the Ommaya. I even forgot about the Peg-L-asparaginase on Monday. Luckily, no side-effects to report from the Peg-L. My blood counts plummeted as predicted from the cytarabine, pushing me into the neutropenic zone (sub-500 neutrophils) for the first time a few years, and also lowering my platelets. But we were able to keep the platelet count safe with the combination of infusions and the growth factor. We're also trying IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin) therapy to see if it will raise my platelet count. IVIG is pretty cool in that it's a bag of pooled anti-bodies taken from the plasma of thousands of donors. IVIG is used to give some people makeshift "immune systems", who can't make their own antibodies, but its also used to calm down auto-immune disorders like my platelet au

I started consolidation on Monday of this week. I had an appointment with Dr. Shustov to check blood counts and talk about the upcoming chemo.  Cytarabine is the only chemo in the regimine that happens in-patient, so I knew I would be going into the medical center later. But, to my surprise, I learned that the stay would be Mon-Wed, not Mon-Tues like the schedule had indicated. So goes things in the healthcare world, little surprises seem to pop-up all the time no matter how diligent I try to be in clarifying and asking questions. Cytarabine is cool in that the working mechanism in the drug was found from nature: a species of sponge in coral reefs. Its now synthesized, but the sponge they found produced a cytosine base that combine with deoxyribose to produce something similar to DNA, but not exactly DNA. If you infuse that cytosine base to humans, dividing cells will uptake it thinking its the base to make DNA, and create cells that have this altered DNA, which kills the cells. Since

Started the week off with bone-marrow chemo on Monday. The same as the last two weeks: Daunorubicin, Vincristine, Dexamethasone. The team decided to do a half-dose on the Vincristine since the neuropathy improved in the hands, but it was still rather recent since the last full dose. It only takes 30 minutes to infuse the chemo, which is nice, and I'm used to the side-effects on these ones now, so anxiety is low in the infusion room. An interesting part of undergoing therapy, which I remember noticing three years ago, is the transition from fearful to comfortable with infusions.   Before the first round of a new drug, I would have a chat with the chemo pharmacist and usually leave feeling rather anxious since they pass over an info list with a huge list of possible complications and it's only human nature to zero-in on the rare occurrences. After gaining information from the doctor and the nurses, I would feel more at-ease, but since the human body is so complicated and each per