i'm sitting in a coffee shop in roskilde. the only one in this town... maybe all of denmark (surely not) which is open before 10 in the morning. i had my blood taken this morning. a last ditch effort to see if i could have my chemo today. my white blood cell count was too low yesterday. at 1.37. it needed to be at 1.5. from what i can tell with my shoddy internet research, these are both very low numbers... the norm being somewhere between 4-10. so... i went today just hoping and praying and taking maitake mushroom pills and papaya extract and vitamin c and b vitamins and whatever else i could think of, for that little boost that would keep me on schedule, that would make my brother's five day visit, which is starting in one hour, all the more helpful. that would make yesterday's pre-test result realization that i will be done with chemo in three weeks, (THREE WEEKS!), all the more likely to be true. i waited here for the nurse to call me up and give me the news. when she called and told me the counts were good enough to go forward today... ahh! music to my ears. when she told me the number today was 5.0, i thought i'd misheard yesterday's number. but no... it was 1.37 yesterday. and it's 5 today. wow... i am amazed at the human body's resilience. throw what you will at it, give it cancer, give it chemo, give it fevers and the flu and bad hospital food and there's still some part of it that wants to get better. that works to get better. to function like it was meant to function. oh... that's a wonder.
so ten minutes now and then i should leave to get started on my injection of benadryl. did i tell you that last time i had a rather common allergic reaction to this new (or not so new now), to this second chemo med. i was saying something to my sister and brother-in-law and about to take a breath after a little laugh and sheesh, it became hard to take a deep breath. and apparently my face became flush in about 1 second. all symptoms of the allergic reaction. so now i get to have a little benadryl kick (not so much a kick as a snooze fest) before the last two rounds.
well... that's it for now. thanks to all who took a little time to think about my white blood cells yesterday. they got the message!
6 comments:
amazing! So glad you get to proceed as scheduled and know that your body must be doing so much work to heal itself.
Nighty night! And may the good days come quickly again! (Good job on helping your body along!)
Still thinking positive white blood cell thoughts, as well as no-allergic-reaction thoughts and fun-with-your-brother thoughts. xoxo
Glad that white count bounced up and you're staying on schedule with the chemo. Can we have some kind of internet celebration when you're done with the chemo drugs??
A hug from Wisconsin
Sara
Wonderful news! Hoping that this round goes smoothly.
Hi! I was actually reading through a few of your posts and just wanted to say that I'm glad things are going well with chemo. My thoughts and prayers are with you though your recovery. I had a quick question about your blog and was hoping you could email me back when you get the chance, thanks : )
Emmy
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