The Nadir

I apologize for the lag in updates. I have been feeling so well that I picked up shifts at work yesterday and today. It's been so nice to get out of the house, off the couch. And heck, make a little money and see my friends, too.

I had blood work and an office visit today. I walked into my Onc's office, and he didn't even look up from my chart as he said, matter-of-factly: "Sara, your counts are shit." (I love my doctor. He's an ass.) What he meant was that my white blood cell count is very, very low. So, I've been instructed to start taking the Cipro they had me keep around in case of this sort of thing. (Cipro is short for Ciprofloxacin, a drug used to treat and prevent infections caused by bacteria. Powerful stuff.) I am to take it twice a day until Monday, when we will do more blood work to keep an eye on things.

What this means is that I have hit the "nadir" (the point of low white blood cell counts) with no debilitating pain from the Neulasta (so far)! I have been very achy today, and it's now getting a bit worse, but it's more annoying and uncomfortable than really painful. Was it the Claritin I've been taking for the last week? The preemptive Ibuprofen I've ingested? Maybe this Neulasta really is different. Needless to say, I'm very happy. This is pain I can deal with.

The rest of our conversation during the office visit covered our plan for the next few weeks. Monday the 17th: blood work, Monday the 24th: Blood work, and I begin the first of three days of my second cycle of ICE. Tuesday: ICE, Wednesday: ICE. Sometime the week after, blood work. Then, on February 7th I get a PET scan to see how I've responded. Moment of truth. From that point my Onc confers with KU Med as to the next step. If he doesn't like what he sees on the PET, that might mean a few more rounds of ICE. If the scan's looking good, we move on to the harvest. Man. That term is so dramatic, it needs to be capitalized and italicized. The Harvest. There we go. Dun dun duuuunnn.

Anyhoo. I'm feeling surprisingly well. Fatigued, definitely. Weak. Really feeling that achy bone pain now. But the nausea has passed. The chemo brain is manageable. Not bad, not bad at all.

Well, off to bed.


Oh, and Rock Chalk Jayhawk!