Erika's Treatment Update -- Week 52

Looks like things are moving in a positive direction this week. I'm feeling much better since I was released from the hospital. My whole stomach situation is back to normal, although I have strict orders to continue taking medications so that I don't have a re-occurence of what happened again. My nurse practitioner was telling me today that she's always having to admit people into the hospital who are on this particular chemo for the same reason so I'm definitely not alone.

My energy level has been really high the last few days. I have been getting out and doing a lot of walking in the evenings which is nice. I'm down to 20mg of prednsione which is pretty low, however I have been having some trouble sleeping at night. I'm usually up from 3am-7am, which drives me crazy. So if some of you are getting emails from me at those hours you know why.

Today I went into Stanford with plans to get chemo. My oncologist was out of town, however I met with my nurse practitioner. I barely made the cut in terms of my white count to receive chemo today (neutrophils were 1.5 which is the minimum they could be). She's pretty sure that I won't be able to receive treatment next week since this is just going to kill my counts. I'm actually going to start 5 days of Neupogen tonight (my dad will give me the shots) to help boost my white count this time around. We also discussed that I might have to just keep to an every other week schedule instead of every week like originally planned. My other counts looked great however and she agreed that my skin/mouth are healing really good. Oh and I did get a little bit of good news...I had a chest x-ray done today and it shows some significant shrinkage in my chest mass. She was very impressed considering that they can't see much on a chest x-ray compared to a CT scan. She will be talking to my doctor when she gets back on Monday to discuss doing another CT scan soon to see if the liver is also responding well. We're not sure if this response is a result of the new chemo that I have been on or from the GVHD or a combination of both. I guess we will never know, but regardless it's a GOOD thing! I guess everything I've gone though the last few weeks with the GVHD was worth it in the end if it helped out a little. I'll be back at Stanford next Wednesday again to check my counts and see how I'm doing.

This weekend I'm looking forward to some visits from friend's from down south and a Father's Day picnic that Chris and I are putting together for our families. Hopefully the weather will be nice since I know there are some showers anticipated in the next few days.

I do have a request for any of you that could help out this time...I need recommendations for any good books to read. If any of you have read any good books lately, please email me or write a comment below, I'm desperate for something good. The last book I finished was Kite Runner which I enjoyed.

Hope you all have a great Father's Day weekend!