Erika's Treatment Update -- Week 29

Happy New Year!

Hope you all had a safe and fun New Year's! As for Chris and I, we went out to dinner on New Year's eve with family and then went over to a friend's house for dessert. Unlike the last few years, we actually managed to stay up past midnight this time. I really enjoyed having Chris home so much over the long holiday weekends, it's been so lonely being back at home during the week! Well, here's the latest news...

• I went in for my 7th chemo treatment last Wednesday. The infusion went great as usual and I met with both my oncologist and BMT doctor. Both said I looked well and my counts were great as have been the past few weeks. They were pleased with my CT scan results (more so than I was). Basically the CT showed that the tumors in my lung have decreased by about half and the main mass in the middle of my chest has stayed stable or possibly decreased slightly (it measures 4.3cm). There were a few tiny new spots in the lung that they weren't too concerned about, because they could have easily been missed on the previous scan. There's also a small spot in my liver, however its characteristics are very much of a cyst rather than a malignancy. Overall, the chemo has been controlling my disease which the doctor's are happy about. They have decided to continue with this same treatment until it stops being effective. Although the infusion went smoothly on Wednesday, that night was a different story. I started getting some intense chills around 11pm, which was the first sign of a fever. The fever continued to climb through the night and morning hours (even after taking Tylenol every 4 hours) until it reached 104F around 3:30am. Chris had to call the emergency doctor on call and lucky for me they didn't make me go in, but had me do cold compresses and ice packs until the fever went down to about 102F. My temperature finally reached a normal range by Thursday afternoon, however the whole experience was a little scary. I'm hoping the next round of chemo doesn't bring a similar adventure. I'm scheduled to be back at Stanford for round 8 on January 19th.

That's the latest on my treatment. I've mostly been keeping busy during the days watching the Food Network, cooking, and baking. I'm looking forward to a day of sunshine, I feel like it's been cloudy and rainy too long!