January Update

 A belated Happy New Year to all my readers. I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and I wish all of you success and all the best life has to offer for 2013.

New Years is known to be a time and opportunity for many to make a fresh start or a new beginning. I will be continuing on the course that I have taken with regard to my treatments and such.

My latest health news is a mixed bag of things that have gone on. On January 4th I had a pre-chemo check up with my Oncologist Dr. Kanjeekal. She was impressed with how things were going and my current blood workup results. So overall with good blood work results she said we will keep on with the Bendamustine treatment and go for a full 8 courses.

January 9th, Chemo treatment day 1, went well, that was until I got home. Once home for an hour or so the chills set in and I could not get warm no matter how many blankets I threw on. I knew right then what was going to come next. Fevers, and sure enough after checking my temperature I was already up to 98.0 F. Soon after Brenda got home she checked my temperature and it was up to 101.0 F. After trying to get a hold of someone after hours at the cancer centre and failing that, Brenda was able to get through to my home nurse around 9 pm at which time my temperature was up to 103.4 F., my nurse suggested going to emerg. which after my last experience there I did not want to lay in emerg. for 30 hrs again waiting for a room.

My nurse then suggest taking Tylenol and monitoring the fever. At bedtime it was up to 104.6! Next temp Brenda got me up for was at 103.2 so it was now dropping with the help of the Tylenol. Next morning it was at 100.0 F when I got up and down to 98.4 or so by the time I got ready to leave for the Cancer Centre for day two of my Bendamustine treatment.

Upon arriving at the Cancer Centre and checking in, I informed the receptionist about my chills and temperatures that I had the night before and though my Oncologist should be informed before we began with treatment. I was called in shortly afterward and got hooked up to the antibiotic drip and had my vitals taken. My temperature was now bordering on being normal again.

Just as the drip I was on ended, I was informed that my Oncologist was cancelling this session due to the fevers and chills of the night before. The thought was that if we continued and went ahead with the treatment, that I would most likely I would end up being neutropenic and spiking fevers again, which would only mean one thing, I would be admitted again with no immune system and be there on I.V. antibiotics until my blood counts returned to "somewhat" normal and I could be sprung then and not until.

I did not want any part of that and that was fine with me! As I was walking out the door of the chemo suite when they called me back to ask me to hang around for a couple minutes, they also asked if I had, had a neulasta or neupogen shot recently, to which I replied no. Last one of those was way back when I had the bone marrow transplant in 2008! They said that they might just go ahead with this treatment after having a Neupogen injection to boost my counts. I told them I would be going down to Supportive Care on the main floor for my appointment with my Social Worker and that if they needed me back up sooner, they could find me there.


After seeing my Social Worker I returned back to the second floor and into the Chemo Suite. They now informed my that we would be definitely be cancelling this Chemo Session. So no second half to this treatment due to low blood counts. I returned hope where it was time for some R&R and back to bed for a nap!

It was after getting up from the nap that I had a sore throat and found that I had blisters starting on my lip again. I ordered more Miles Solution and called the Cancer Centre to inform them of this. Ordering the Miles for now is all we are going to due unless it gets really bad. So rinsing and gargling with the Miles it is!

There are some other family related matters that occurred, but I will talk of them in the next blog.

So until be good to yourself and others, and enjoy life to it's fullest!