A Christmas Gift

It's Christmas week, the festive lights are twinkling, there are presents under the tree ...and Santa delivered an early Christmas gift. 

Last week those pesky white blood cells were low again so my doctor prescribed another five day course of Neupogen to stimulate the bone marrow alongside my usual weekly course of Taxol.

So my handy husband has been 'nurse' again, administering the injections in my festively bulging belly, and I have endured a week of Taxol muscle aches plus Neupogen bone pains.  It's been tough, especially during long, painful, sleepless nights.  But it was worth it.

Today I got just what I wanted for Christmas: my blood test result was NORMAL.  That's the first time since I started chemo in August.  And as a bonus gift, my blood pressure (normally very low) was also normal (clearly due to my excellent efforts to increase my salt intake as instructed.  More crisps, please!).

As the pains wear off, I'm feeling good.  It probably won't last too long as I will have chemo again tomorrow but hey, I'm going to enjoy this Christmas bonus as long as I can!

I'm grateful to be in such good shape so near to the end of chemo.  I had never expected to feel such vitality at this point, even if it is just a brief window.  My body seems to be determined to bounce back; I even have a fresh crop of fuzz growing on my baldie head.

Yah-boo cancer - you can get this babe down but you can't keep her there.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Everything comes in twos

Sometimes nurses are like buses: you wait and wait and finally two arrive at once.

I arrive on time for chemo and am duly assigned a bed, where I organise myself comfortably as usual with my book, phone, headphones, water and snacks on the table and (of course) my woolly socks on my feet.  I start a book and wait....and wait.  It is a whole hour before two nurses bustle in at once, full of apologies - they both laugh to see the other and one stays to insert the IV while the other bustles off to the many other jobs that need doing. 

Pre-Christmas isn't the best time to be fitting in weekly chemo sessions apparently, everyone is trying to pack in appointments before the festive season arrives so the nurses are rushed off their feet.  The two December general strike days we had here in Brussels haven't helped either; the hospital did its best to  carry on serving but it wasn't easy for staff or patients to get there with no public transport and blockages on the roads.  (I was lucky enough not to have treatments planned for the strike days though I did have to go for a blood test on the day of the police protest.  This one took the form of stopping every car to check papers and do breathalysers and generally slow the traffic down.  Bonne fete everyone!  I managed to outfox them though by taking a winding back route, hunched over my sat nav and swearing at it every time it tried to direct me back onto the highway.  It all adds zest to my routine, I guess).  I hope we only have two strikes though I suspect that Belgian militant tendencies combined with austerity measures mean that we are in for some more.  The kids will be thrilled - the schools close on strike days as well.

Today my theme of twos carries on when my doctor makes an unusual appearance by my bedside.  My white blood cells have plummeted from last week's glorious high and are low again, not too low for chemo today but low enough that the doctor doubts that I will be able to go ahead next week without intervention.  So I will have a course of Neupogen alongside the chemo this week.  Two treatments at once equals Taxol muscle aches plus Neupogen bone pains for five days, yippee!  Still, I hope that this will be enough to get me through the last three weeks of Taxol.  Wait, did I just say last three weeks?  Yes, the end is in sight!

The approaching end of chemo means that we need to start planning for the start of radiotherapy and the doctor's visit is followed by one from my lovely cancer nurse on that subject.  But she brings bad news: the radiotherapy unit in St Luc's is closed for the next six months for work.  So she suggests that I go to the hospital at Botanique instead.  Botanique!!  It's right in the centre of Brussels so driving would be a pretty awful idea.  Getting there on the metro is easy...but not quick.  That wouldn't matter for an appointment now and then, or even once a week, but radio will be every single day for six weeks.  Luckily, my theme of twos stands me in good stead because when she sees the dismay on my face she has a second suggestion.  St Elizabeth in Uccle -which is actually not much further than my current drive, though I don't even want to think about the traffic to get across town in that direction.  But these long, six months have taught me that I just have to be flexible and get through it somehow.  Six weeks will, at least, seem short after five months of chemo.

My head is reeling with all this information as the one remaining nurse finishes setting up the Taxol.  Two minutes after she departs - the machine starts beeping.  It's stuck again.  I ring but no-one comes.  On these busy pre-holiday days it seems, you either get two nurses or none at all.

Thanks Neupogen - A Good News Update

Last week I reported that my white blood cell count was stonkingly low so I had to have a week off chemo as well as the dreaded five day course of Neupogen injections ('Ouch - Neupogen').

Day two duly delivered back ache and leg bone agony and I was dreading the remaining injections.

But I have good news to report: the next morning the pain had utterly vanished.  I had the third injection with a the glum certainty that the pain would be back by lunchtime....and it wasn't.  In fact, the rest of the course passed without incident. 

My husband did a splendid job of sticking the needles into my belly every morning and today I have been feeling much better.

I'm told that you can't tell whether your white blood cell count is up or down but I don't believe a word of it.  A few weeks ago I posted about how remarkably well  I was feeling and, hey presto, my blood test revealed my highest count yet.  And last week I was really struggling to cope - hardly surprising as my count was so magnificently low.

Today I might not exactly have as much bounce as a Tigger but I could definitely compete with a small frog.  So it was more with relief than surprise that I got my blood test results and found that my white blood cells have recovered.  They're still on the low side but they're high enough - so back on Taxol tomorrow!

Neupogen did the job and I survived a horribly low white blood cell count without catching a thing - despite the snotty kids.

On the other hand, I still have six Taxol to get through so it seems a pretty good bet that my bone marrow is going to struggle.  I asked the doctor what we could do about this and the short answer was...not much.  A low count will mean another missed week and another course of neupogen.  So I don't think I've seen the last of neutropenia and all these delays mean that chemo will end up stretching further and further into January.

But if there's one thing that chemo has taught me, it's to go with the flow.  So for now I'm just enjoying my restored white blood cells and my little frog bounce. 

Ouch - Neupogen

Ouch.

Now that I am neutropenic (with a titchy white blood cell count), I can't have chemo this week and instead I have to have a course of 5 injections of Neupogen to boost my bone marrow.

And Neupogen has put my Taxol aches in their place.  The first injection was fine but today the nurse arrived to give me the second and, soon afterwards, the bones in the base of my spine, hips and upper legs started up a major protest.  I even skipped my exercise class, thus breaking my own rule to keep moving no matter what to get through the symptoms,  but today even walking felt something of a challenge.

So I sat on a hot water bottle at home instead.

At least the pain reassures me that perhaps the injections are working. It is a little scary walking around snotty, sneezy, wintery Brussels with a white blood cell count of only 200.  Basically, my immune system can't fight off anything just now, so I'm keeping everyone at arm's length and using antiseptic gel on my hands all the time. My husband would rather that I just stayed at home but I pointed out that most days I end up in a lift with a load of sick people at the hospital anyway so I can't see the harm in making my coffee date. 

And I was an utter rebel today - I had a real, caffeinated latte!  Coffee is supposed to reduce the effectiveness of Taxol but I figured that it couldn't do much harm if I have to have a week off from Taxol anyway.  Oh my, did it taste good!

I'm not sure what to do about the pain.  The doctor told me yesterday I could take paracetamol or neurophen if I needed it.  But my oncologist warned me about taking anything which might mask a fever: if I get the slightest temperature I have to rush to A&E in case I end up with sepsis.  Anyway, this morning I felt so rough that I daringly took a paracetamol and that did take the edge of it.

At least the injection itself doesn't hurt, it goes straight into the roll of fat at my stomach and I don't feel a thing.  It is annoying to wait at home for the nurse though, and I'm too much of a wimp to stick a needle into myself.  So the nurse showed my husband how to do it and tomorrow he will become my nurse.

My husband is a highly talented person who could turn his hand to most careers.  But being a nurse is definitely not an obvious choice for him.  And yet he has already surprised me: after my mastectomy he had to change the dressings and clean my newly scarred boy-chest.  Not, I am sure, what he imagined when I swept down that aisle in my white princess dress and he looked me in the eye and said, 'In sickness or in health.'  

I love him more than ever for it.

But I'm still rather nervous about him sticking a needle in me tomorrow.

A third of the way through Taxol...and severely neutropenic

I'm on a downer today.

I feel as if I've done the tearful drive home from the hospital too many times.  And it always seems to be raining...  I went for my routine blood test this morning and my white blood cell count is super low;  severely neutroprenic at only 200.  So there's no question of having my weekly Taxol tomorrow and instead I need to have five once-a-day injections of Neupogen to boost my bone marrow.

It's not a big deal.  I guess I'm just not very good at coping with changes of plan.  It's another week's delay, so  it looks as if I'll be on chemo into the new year.  That's a bummer when I'd hoped to be done before Christmas.

And I'm a bit scared of this injection as I've read reports of people suffering severe bone pains - oh, I so shouldn't have Googled! 

On a more positive note, I've been coping well with Taxol.  The worst thing has been the lack of sleep: first of all I'm steroid-jittery for a couple of nights.  Then come the hot flashes that have me throwing off the duvet one minute, then pulling it back on when I'm all shivery again the next minute.  Then come the muscle aches. 

But none of the symptoms have been too severe.  I've been able to get on with life as usual, with just the occasional afternoon nap (though I did fall asleep in front of the computer once and woke up dribbling on the keyboard...). 

And I haven't been on a downward slope in quite the way I expected when they told me the symptoms were 'cumulative'.  Week two was my toughest so far with painful aches and lots of tingling in finger and toes.  Here we go, I thought.  Already this bad and still seven sessions ahead of me...  But Week Three has gone rather well with barely a tingle in my toes.  Perhaps my lovely friends who took me on a spa day made all the difference.  That sounds like a splendid excuse for a weekly spa date.

So it's only those pesky white blood cells causing the problem and there's not a lot I can do about that.  I just need to pull myself together and be grateful that it's not been worse.  And now I have tomorrow morning unexpectedly free.  Hmmm, perhaps I could fit in another spa?