And a busy week it has been...
Chemo on Monday and Thursday, my Mom and Bradley's birthdays yesterday and my sister and family were also in our thoughts and prayers as she laid her step Dad to rest yesterday.
It is amazing how quickly we have fallen back into the chemo routine. Jimmy didn't have any significant side effects after Monday's chemo apart from being very cold and tired. Nodding off in his chair and falling asleep in front of the TV at night. He also slept in a bit on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.
Our second round of first cycle of chemo was yesterday again and as always, before they start anything, he had bloods taken. They went ahead with chemo but his white blood cells have bottomed out since Monday. In 3 days they dropped from 3.7 to 1.8 (range being 4.0 to 11.0). His Neutrophils, which again in layman's terms, are babies of what becomes a white blood cell dropped from 1.86 to 0.80 (range being 2.00 to 7.50). We are waiting for a call from UCTPAH this morning as we will have to go through and collect some Neupogen injections which I will be giving him at home. As far as I can remember Neupogen is the same injections that he will have prior to stem cell harvest to boost stem cell growth. Of course this means that Jimmy is very susceptible to infection now but on the good side this means that the chemo is doing its thing as it attacks good and bad. His Basophils jumped from 1.2 to 9.0 (range being 0.0 to 0.5). Basophils are produced in your bone marrow and circulate in the blood. It is stimulated to release granules of toxic enzymes in an effort to neutralise parasites. Basophils also contain histamine which causes inflammation and prevents blood from clotting when released. They are found in unusually high numbers at sites of infection. Well now that the Biology lesson is finished, we'll move on...
All our chickens will be here this weekend but it will have to be a very quiet one spent at home. I see the sun is shining today for the first time in a while but I will be rather peeved if it is a beautiful weekend!
We are jealously thinking of all our Sunshine Corner friends who leave today for a golfing weekend in Langebaan. We hope you guys have an awesome weekend away, take care and travel safe. We wish we were there. Here's to some good golf and we definitely look forward to being there with you all next year.
I just had an awesome Skype call from Megan. She has just completed 4 weeks of training doing practicals and 4 hour lectures and wrote her exam yesterday and got 90%. She has also been promoted to a section leader for the emergency drills on the ship involving all the passengers. Megan has the day off tomorrow (in Venice) because she won a competition. They had to hand out forms promoting something and the passengers had to fill them out and hand them in and she had the most hand ins. She seems so happy, she says she misses us but doesn't think she is ever coming home because she loves it so much. They had a braai for all the staff (they call it a BBQ) on the ship during the week and all the senior staff had to serve them.
Maureen and I have found a very useful site which explains blood counts and I have added it under 'useful links' down the left hand side of the home page.
No comments:
Post a Comment