Counts

My white blood counts and red blood counts are amazingly higher this week after chemo than they were last week before chemo. This tells me that the Chinese herbal formula I'm taking "C/R" is covering me because last week when I got my blood checked, I'd been off them for about 10 days. I started them again the day before chemo and have been on them all week. And when I went in to acupuncture today, I made sure to get another bottle so I don't run out! But that was before I saw my counts.

Unfortunately, my neutraphils and platelets are still low. I love how SC Medical gives your tests results to you to check out for yourself online.
Here are the results from last week (before chemo) and today:
Standard Range 4.0-11.0 K/uL 3.90-5.40 M/uL 150-400 K/uL 2.0-8.0 K/uL
2/17/09 white: 3.2 L; red: 3.32 L; platelet:308
2/24/09 white: 3.6 L; red: 3.45 L; pltlts82 L; neutraphils: 1.1 L

So I'm still tired, but glad to see my counts up. Maybe that's why I haven't gotten this cold. That and staying away from my kids and using aromatherapy.

Anyway, I talked with my oncologist because I wanted to know whether I should speed this up and get chemo every other week rather than every 3 weeks. I think I might do that later - the last 2 rounds of this and see how this first round goes. He says if my bone marrow can handle it, it's ok to do that. So we'll see how I recover those nutraphils. I also don't want to be taking off so much from my clients, if I go every other week. And before my next chemo, I want to go to a Hadassah luncheon with my mother-in-law for my 3rd week when I'm feeling so peachy.

It was nice getting all that Grabelle love, offers of support, offer to come over and watch a movie sometime! Plus other offers of vegetable cooking, cleaning, and walks are so nice. After discussing these things with Geoff, he did a fabulous job on the kitchen counters and is making some veggies to go with tonight's dinner! He is a definite mensch as you all know.

I'm looking forward to getting out of the house on Thursday to see two clients. And my dad is coming to visit us on Friday. Law & Order is still a winner for me and I love that Jack McCoy - he doesn't let anyone get away with doing wrong. I've also gotten into CMT believe it or not. They have some very good, meaningful songs that bring me joy right now.

Does everyone know about Hadassah and what they do? I want to write about that next. I never knew until my mother-in-law started dragging me to her meetings. I've always really enjoyed their magazine - but never thought twice about them since they were my mother and mother-in-law's organizations. It's interesting because in S.C., they can't get any "younger" women to come to regular meetings...

So thanks again for your support and I'll catch you all next time I want to write. Maybe it'll be about Hadassah.

Chemo Went Smoothly

I didn't have any reaction to chemo today. My oncologist lowered the normal dose by 25%. He says fatigue is the only reaction & possible neuropathy in the fingers and toes. No nausea. My white counts were lower than last week: 3.2 vs 3.9. (4 is normal). My neutraphils went down: 1.8 this week vs 2.9 last week. (2 is within normal range and .9 is good but if they go down to .5, I'm in danger) But my red blood cells and platelets were up, though the RBCs were lower than normal range.

I ran out of one of the immune building Chinese formulas so I was off of it from last week until this week. So I guess now I know that I really need to continue taking that! I took a different formula in the meantime but it probably wasn't covering me fully.

My doctor wants to see how my immune system does on this new chemo and then if I do ok, we'll probably do 3 more sessions every 3 weeks. If I don't do well, he mentioned the possibility of doing "dense dose" which is a lower amount every other week but ends up being a higher dose overall. Just to get this over with and not damage my immune system. I still want to ask him if we can just do the dense dose anyway and get it over sooner! I'll ask tomorrow when I go in for my neulasta shot.

We saw the radiation oncologist today. We liked her very much and she was recommended by all my other doctors. She confirmed my desire to get mastectomies on both sides to lower my chances of recurrence and no reconstruction to lower my chance of not being able to feel a recurrence, plus to lower my need for more surgeries! Survival rates remain the same between lumpectomies and mastectomies. I just don't want to go through this again more than I will mourn the loss of my body parts. But I will have to go through some grieving over the loss for sure.

This Dr. also lowered our expectations for being done with all my treatment by our Hawaii trip, August 5th. She said if there are no complications, then we can make it. If there are complications (example: extra surgery recovery time due to infections, etc., or not being able to get all my chemos on schedule.) Plus she recommended changing Aimee's Bat Mitzvah date from July 26th to sometime in the Fall.

One very positive thing she did say was that after an extensive palpating exam of my breasts, she couldn't feel any tumor! I will bring that up to my oncologist too because maybe I don't have to go through all this chemo?

Anyway, I hope I feel fine next weekend because I want my parents to come visit. They will bring my niece Rachel too (my sister's daughter). Rachel gave me the ok to miss her softball games because, "family's important!"

Here's a quote to end this update,
"Whenever someone has found the courage to live more deeply, more courageously than before, no matter how short a time it may be, they hold open that door for anyone who tries to follow." Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. in her book: My Grandfather's Blessings.

Have a good rest of the week and weekend.

Immune Count is Up & Aromatherapy

Every week I go in to get my blood drawn out of my port by the chemo nurses at my oncologist office - to check my immune system. The port is located under my skin on my chest between my collarbone and my right breast. It feels like a raised disk and I can feel a thin tube running up to my collar bone that I guess connects this with my vein. It's a vulnerable feeling when I go to get this blood draw so I get the shot that numbs the skin before they push in the IV. I tried using a cream to numb the area because the numbing shot stings but then I thought that I could deal better with the sting than with the puncture of the IV. I was wrong. My answer to this dilemma was to ask the chemo nurses to inject the lidocaine at a very slow pace. No sting!!

My dad told me that he always needs more pain medication than normal people do when he's been in the hospital but he's also more sensitive to other kinds of medications and needs to take less of them. I guess I'm like him. Diladed (sp?) was the only thing that helped my pain in the hospital so maybe I'm more sensitive to needles and pain (and chemo) then most.

Anyway, because I have had immune problems, the doc wants to check my counts every week. Every Tuesday I go in for a blood draw. This Tuesday marked 2 weeks post-chemo and my white count was up to 3.9 - remember 4.0 is the lowest end of normal. So my immune system is definitely healing from that first blast that sent me into the hospital. Last chemo I was up to 3.3 the day before getting chemo again. This time I'm already above that one week earlier.

I can't believe how awful I felt after that first chemo and then after getting out of the hospital. I definitely believe now that I dodged a bullet with that experience. But I really didn't know until now that that was not how chemo was supposed to be.

Anyway, I think going to acupuncture regularly and sometimes 2 or 3 times a week has really helped me heal. The Chinese herbs I'm taking have probably helped my immune system more than anything and I regret that I wasn't on them regularly from the beginning. But I just couldn't get them down when I was struggling to just get water and food down.

You can imagine, now knowing me, how many supplements I was primed to take and I had them all laid out for me by the day and time to take them prior to my first chemo. When I got home from the hospital, weeks went by as I looked at those supplements and was too overwhelmed and nauseous and probably depressed and in shock to take anything... Thank goodness a nutritionist told me about Florastor and I was able to build probiotics in my system without having the antibiotics destroy them so the nausea went away.

I'm also now enjoying using aromatherapy as a complimentary medicine. I got some nice blends that my acuptuncturist uses, made by Elizabeth Van Buren: Immune, Digest, Headache, and Calming are all the blends I like. Then another friend who's a cancer survivor told me about making your own blend of all the cancer-fighting essential oils: Frankincense, Lavender, Geranium, Orange, and Lemon. I got myself a dropper bottle and filled it part-way with jojoba oil and then put 20 drops of each of these single essential oils into the dropper bottle. Everyday I use the dropper and drop 2 or 3 drops to rub into the areas of my body where I want to get rid of those cells. Whether it really works or not, I love the smells.

I am very effected by smells. This was difficult when I was nauseous all the time and it was excruciating when I couldn't eat what my family was eating. Recently, my sister-in-law Wendi came for a visit and brought me some freesias - one of my favorite smells. Yesterday Geoff cut one of our roses (we shouldn't even have them yet, but for the weather) and it's sitting on my desk right now. 16 years ago, when I had my own therapy office in Hermosa Beach, I had a diffuser going all the time. I made my own blend for that: 1/8th oz. of tangerine, 20 drops of eucalyptus, 20 drops of cypress and 20 drops of geranium. I got rid of that diffuser when we moved and need to get another one! I love scented candles too. But strong perfumes are sometimes too harsh for me.

Anyway, life goes on and I'm enjoying the change in weather - finally getting some rain - though I don't like the cold. I've been going through receipts and tallying them for taxes tomorrow (we're meeting with the accountant). This was something that I was dreading having to do months ago when I felt so sick. Instead I felt great this week. I was even happy to see I actually made a little money last quarter of last year! Next week on Wednesday is the new/old T chemo which is a 4 hour drip. I'll check back in again before that.

Can't Go Out in Public

So I got my blood count today and even though I'm doing better than last time, I still can't go out in public places. The following are the counts from before this last chemo, and then today - one week later, and how that compares to one week after chemo last time.

White Blood Cell(K/uL)
Standard Range 4.0-11.0 K/uL
before chemo 3.1
after (today) 1.6
last time .9

PLATELET (K/uL)
Standard Range 150-400 K/uL
before chemo 342
after (today) 130
last time 102

NEUTROPHIL ABS (K/uL)
Standard Range 2.0-8.0 K/uL
before chemo 1.9
after (today) .9
last time .5

I can tell the difference between last time and this time since I have more energy than last time and I didn't feel like having Geoff drive me to get the blood draw. I drove myself there and to acupuncture afterward.

Still it's kind of a drag because there's a city council meeting I'd love to go to at 3pm today. Oh well. I'll hear what happened without having to be there - though I would have loved to speak and let them know that yet another person from Westlake is fighting cancer - though it may have absolutely nothing to do with the cell phone towers right next door. There is also a huge pole of them that I can see from my home and 3 of us on this block (that I know of) have been or are in the cancer fight. Though the towers down the hill from my home may have absolutely nothing to do with the cancer on this block.

For those of you not in S.C., the city council is considering putting a 1,000 foot buffer between further cell tower placement and elementary schools. Yay!

Can't wait to find out how it goes since I participated in helping this issue get to this point. I'm proud of myself and the other parents I worked with on this! The danger of cell phone radiation is still considered "controversial" and so I am so proud of our county superintendents and now our city council members who are taking the precautionary stance for the sake of children. (Despite a federal law prohibiting them from challenging placement of these towers based on health reasons.) Unfortunately, they are planning to allow those two existing towers next to Westlake and the ones next to all the other schools to remain - it's just new towers that they are considering banning next to schools.

If you were wondering, my computer's wired up to the wall (no wireless internet), my home phones are wired to the wall and my cell phone is off unless I need to use it in an emergency. It's hard to catch me when I'm not home but I get along just fine! Imagine! Jason just got his first cell phone for emergencies at age 14.

So yes, I have been quite fanatical about this issue. Hasn't helped me health-wise obviously! And now that I'm fighting this dreaded disease, I probably glow in the dark from all of the radiation my body's endured from CT scans! But I'm going to live for awhile longer thanks to the treatment I am receiving. Can't control everything!