Erika's Treatment Update -- Week 50

Today was another long day at Stanford. Because I didn't think my counts were going to be good enough to get chemo today, I decided to go on my own (I didn't want Chris to take the day off from work) so it turned out to be a long, boring, lonely day. My white count actually ended up being in the normal range so my oncologist decided to do treatment. I also met with my BMT doctor so he could take a look at the progress of my GVHD. He felt that my skin is healing pretty good (the spots are mostly all dried up and scabby), however my mouth and lips are not doing so well. Usually prednisone responds well to the skin, but not as well with the mouth. He suggested that I start on immunosuppressants to try to speed up the recovery, however due to the extreme side effects that I've experienced with them I convinced him not to go on them. We agreed that I would go one more week on high dose prednisone before taking that next step. He's mostly concerned because the mouth/lips haven't allowed me to eat normally and I've lost quite a bit of weight in just the last week. Next week I will be meeting with him and my oncologist once again to check how I'm progressing and for chemo.

Because I've been on the high dose prednisone, I've been having a little more energy than usual. I've been getting out almost every evening (after the sun goes down of course) for a walk and I've been doing quite a bit of cooking. I even managed to take two hours of tap class this past week instead of my usual one hour!