I can honestly say I hate numbers days. These are the days where she gets her CBC with a differential. Basically it tells us how her blood, bone marrow, and body is doing. The numbers we are most concerned with Are her WBC (white blood count), platelets (these normally are destroyed by leukemia cells and pushed out), hemoglobin (red blood cells that carry oxygen to her body) when these are low she usually needs a blood transfusion. Chemo can knock these out as well as leukemia cells. ANC (absolute nuetrophils) this is a type of cell within her WBC that is responsible for helping her body heal from infections, colds, etc. Chemo pretty much knocks these out, and they want them to stay low so cancer cells can't thrive, but not too low all the time where it puts you at risk. Whenever this number is below 500, you are considered neutropenic. Basically, fevers and infections can be fatal. Your body doesn't have the armor to fight things off. And right now we are sitting at an ANC of 400. That also means that it may delay some of her chemo for reinduction 2 next week. It may also make our trip to Memphis a little longer than anticipated. Dr. Pui is always unpredictable, so we won't know for sure until next Wednesday. And we are also struggling with whether or not to have her fly down now (as planned) or drive down. If her numbers keep dropping, I definitely don't want to expose her to all those people in the airport and on the airplane for that long amount of time. Mask or no mask.
Ok, so the NBC I threw in the title was just for laughs. I swear I wish that these numbers didn't stress me out so much, I know that chemo can make them do funny and odd things, and need to remember that, but I always have that faint idea far in the back of my brain about relapse. Totally stinks. I had a good melt down last night and soaked my pillow with tears so I feel better now this morning. We are back again at one day at a time and not knowing so I think that is what stresses me out the most. We don't know how long one or both of us will be out of work again, we don't know if we should both go to Memphis and get somebody to stay here with Jack, or if she is expected to stay for the entire 3 weeks, do we make multiple trips to visit with our without Jack. Its just frustrating, and I don't mean to whine, but sometimes, I want to yell at somebody! And sometime I get really angry that she got cancer. I thought that would have passed by now, but last night I was super angry. It just hit me out of the blue.
Well, on a lighter note, our benefit we are having on August 11th is coming together nicely, and now we are even more grateful to the folks at Dying to Do Letterman, The Castle Theatre, Farmaggedon, and the Missfits for helping us put this together, we could NOT have done it on our own. And we are thankful since we are coming into a period where work is uncertain again, thus money will be uncertain. And thus far, people have been wonderful to us with helping out so this is one less thing we have to stress out about. Plus I'm super excited to meet Steve Mazan and see the film. I get goosebumps when I hear people talk about it who have seen it or when I read reviews. You can also now purchase tickets through the Castle's website at http://www.thecastletheatre.com/ And if you can't make it, but think of somebody who could really use some inspiration, please pass on this information. I hear people walk away with "a life changing" experience.
I will keep everybody updated after Lucy gets to Memphis on Wednesday as to what Dr. Pui decides.
Thank you for your continued support. It helps when I am having a bad day to see notes of encouragement.
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