Erika's Treatment Update -- Week 53

Today was a very long day at Stanford. My oncologist was running about two hours late so I spent a lot of time waiting by myself. After much discussion, it was decided that I wouldn't get chemo today. My counts were actually good (the Neupogen and Procrit did their thing), but we're back to constipation problems which are now delaying my chemo. I'm still taking daily laxatives, but the chemo is just too strong and they're not working properly. I'm increasing the dose today to hopefully get back to normal again. My oncolgist was concerned because she has another patient on the same chemo with the same problems who had to have surgery last week because it got out of control. She doesn't want me to get to that stage so unfortunately we're going to have to do my chemo every other week now instead of every week. I'm upset that this is delaying my chemo, but I can understand their concern. I'll be back in next Wednesday for chemo.

I also saw my BMT doctor today for my skin/mouth GVHD. He was very happy with the way things are looking the way my skin is healing. He said I will probably have some discoloration/scarring for a long time and the only way to eliminate that getting worse is to avoid sun exposure altogether. With the hot weather that's pretty much impossible, the best I can do is cover up as much as possible and use the highest sunscreen available (which I've been doing). He did say that I can have a re-occurence of this at any time, especially with sun exposure so I'm going to continue on prednisone and the oral steroids for now.

As far as how I've been feeling...I've actually been very high in energy considering I'm only averaging about 2-3 hours of sleep a night. Chris and I have been walking almost 7 days a week in the evenings and I've also been doing some walking on my own during the days. We're really hoping that we will be able to train with the TNT Fall season for the Nike marathon. No promises, we're just going to play it by ear and see how things go. I'm sure the Procrit shots and prednisone are what is giving me the extra boost of energy. The only drawback to all the exercise is I'm losing more weight which my doctor's are definitely not happy about. They both mentioned today that if this continues, they will not allow me to continue training.

Thank you to all who have emailed me and written comments regarding book recommendations. I have put together a list of all the books so I have plenty of reading to look forward to. I just finished Bridget Jones's Diary this morning and will start reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I also have My Sister's Keeper and The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair) waiting to be read.

This past week I sent out an email asking people if they were interested in joining Chris and I for the LLS SF Giants game on August 30th. It's a 7:15pm Tuesday night game. Many people responded and said they were interested, however started purchasing tickets on their own. In order to sit together, we need a minimum of 25 people. Right now I have about 15 people and the tickets need to be purchased by the end of the month, so if you're interested please let me know ASAP so I can make the group purchase. Please email me at your earliest convenience with the amount of tickets that you're interested in purchasing. If I don't get 25 people, everyone will have to buy tickets individually through the website and we will all be sitting in different areas (which is also fine, I just thought it would be fun to all be together).