August 24, 2009

• Pesky platelets

  Posted by Stephanie 8:55pm CST from the apartment Houston, TX

  Hopefully by now you’ve all read Sammy’s synopsis of his ride yesterday. I can’t say enough how proud I am of him and what he accomplished. I’m truly lucky that he not only stands beside while we go through this, but also goes above and beyond to fight back any way he can! He said there were several thousand riders that participated, and when you added workers and volunteers, there were 6300 people involved with the Philly Livestrong event. Wow. Thanks to everyone who donated–Sammy raised around $1500 for the LAF, and paired with the money raised by all the other riders, I’m sure we helped fight back in a big way.

  Counts update: Platelets are still dropping. They’re not much lower today–just down two to 19, but I’m getting frustrated. I’d like for them to turn around and start going up so that I can quit getting stuck with a needle everyday. They’re moving so slowly at this point that mom and I are concerned about whether or not they’ll be back up high enough to start chemo again next Monday. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see. On a positive note, they drew an electrolyte panel (which hadn’t been done in several days), and my creatinine and carbon dioxide levels are both improving. Creatinine measures how effectively your kidneys are filtering, and for the last couple of months, mine’s been hovering around 0.9-1.0, which is the high side of normal. Today, though, it was 0.7, which is awesome. Guess my day-after-day consumption of four liters of fluid is finally paying off. My C02 level has been low for a long time–that’s why I take a massive amount of sodium bicarbonate tablets to balance things out. Usually that level runs about 22 or 23, on the low side of normal. But today, it was 32, actually above normal range, which means I can cut back on the number of tablets I take everyday. Fewer tablets means my body is doing more of the work itself, which means my kidneys are slowly recovering. All of this is good news in case we do have to go back to Ifosfamide at some point.

  I’m happy to say I still have my hair at this point, although I’m sure it won’t be long before it starts coming out–it’s already lost it’s usual life and vigor. It usually happens about 2-3 weeks after chemo starts. I don’t know whether it’s the Gemcitabine or Docetaxel (or both) that will cause it to fall out, so it could happen in three days, or it could still be two weeks away. I made the bonehead move of forgetting my scarves when I came back down, so Sammy will have to mail some down.

  Time for a walk around the apartment complex. Have a good night everyone!

  –Steph

  • 10:26 pm
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