Erika's Treatment Update -- Week 54

Today was a pretty typical day at Stanford. I went in for labs, to see my oncologist, and then had chemo. My labs looked pretty good, most of my counts were in normal range except for some of my chemistry panel numbers and my LDH. Both my nurse practioner and oncologist felt that this was due to the amount of exercise I've been doing. They think I may not be getting enough fluids and electrolytes causing some of those numbers to be off. The plan is to do chemo every other week now, using 5 days of Neupogen shots following chemo to keep my white blood count up. Next time I go in I'll have a chest x-ray done again and then the following time I will have a full body CT scan to see more detail of my prognosis and response to Velban.

I was informed to continue on the 20mg of prednisone for about another month. I'm still only getting about 2-3 hours of sleep at night so I'm hoping that they will taper me sooner than that. Regardless of the lack of sleep, I still have been pretty good with energy to go out and do a daily walk. Sometimes I go out in the morning and then again in the evening when Chris gets back from work. Our training has been going pretty well and we're hoping to be able to do the 1/2 marathon Jungle Walk/Run coming up in Los Gatos on July 10th. As usual, we're just going to play it by ear and register at the last minute if I feel up to doing it.

That's all the news for this week, it's been a pretty uneventful one (which is always a good thing). Hope you all have a great 4th of July weekend!!