There may be a honeymoon period for chemo but all I know is I’m feeling pretty good considering how I’ve heard it could be. Of course I am excluding the fiasco of last week. I’m happy to say that if this is how things go, I should be able to be at the office working six days out of ten every two weeks. And if I haven’t mentioned it yet, two weeks ago and this week I worked the entirety of each on campus instead of at home. That’s a good indicator of how well I am feeling. Lets hope it stays this way for a long time.
If I can stay on schedule, my last chemo session will be March 3rd if I do the “extra” session at the end since my first was incomplete. It all depends on how I feel and what my blood work looks like from week to week. Basically they’re concerned about my white blood cell count and, if it’s down, my chemo will be delayed until it comes back up. Last week I received a shot of Neulasta which encourages your bone marrow to produce more white blood cells. Of course it has side effects but they didn’t hit me too much.
I need to get a flu shot now. I’m not more likely to become sick during chemo but if I do, it could be much worse than it would have been and potentially interrupt my treatment. When I was at Sloan-Kettering, I was told of patients who were kindergarten teachers who kept on teaching even with all those little ones getting colds. They weren’t as concerned about that as they were with continuing life as usual - being as close to normal as you could be. Basically, they would rather risk that you may get sick and deal with it at that point than just derail your entire life for the duration of treatment.
So we’ll see how my treatment goes. You need to take it week by week. I don’t even have a standing appointment. It’s always wait and see how you feel.
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Hi Ray,
Glad to hear you are strong, I’ve been following on the blog every day.
be well
mark
Comment by mark o — 2008.10.09 @ 9:43 am