Consolidation Week 3

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 seems cytarabine really crushes my marrow. But when I think about it: is this a good thing or bad thing for treatment? I don't know.

For people who have been dealing with chronic allergies or auto-immune diseases, maybe they're accustomed to the lack of control. If they have accepted it, I applaud them. For me, I'm not accustomed to it yet, and it's frustrating. I felt it last week when I received the IVIG and after a couple hours had tingling around the mouth and a raised temperature--signs of a mild allergic reaction.  It's annoying to get an allergic reaction because there is nothing I can do about it, it can escalate and become dangerous, and because it slows the infusion down considerably, doubling the 3-4 hours it normally takes. An allergic reaction makes neither I nor the nurse happy. Their job just got more involved as they have to check on me every 15 minutes--blood pressure, temperature, "how you feeling?"--correspond with the doctor on call, and possibly stay later than they planned. Most people don't have an allergic reaction, which I find hard to believe: it's a pooled bag of antibodies from 1000 people, if you don't have a reaction, wouldn't that be weird? A bad sign for your immune system?  My thought process is likely lacking here and its probably extremely complicated, but it also shows my annoyance that I have no control whether I allergic react or not. In just about every other thing I do I can  use my brain or do something physically to affect the outcome, not with the IVIG bag, or any blood products I receive.

I did get out and go to the Sounders game on Sunday. We had a good group of people going and sat with a nice view of downtown. The pre-game activities included cancer survivors wearing pink and making the ribbon. It was nice to see so many survivors out there.I also stuck in a photo of some mushrooms I found growing next to an apartment building in my neighborood. I've been surprised by all the urban mushrooms this fall.

The ribbon on its way back into the tunnel.

There has been so many urban mushrooms on my walk down to SCCA!