CT Scan, Chemo, and Thanksgiving

Today was a long day at Stanford...I was there from 10am to 3:30pm. The day started off with an appointment with the infectious disease specialist. He took a look at my blood counts as well as the CT scan I had done yesterday. My liver numbers looked good (they were concerned because the anti-fungal medication can elevate them) and the CT scan showed that the nodules in my lungs that were there two weeks ago have cleared up. This is great news, because that means it was indeed a fungal infection that was causing all the high fevers and I have responded well to the medication. Because of the great response, tonight was my last dose of Caspofunjin (the anti-fungal I was giving myself by IV), however I will remain on Voriconazole (an oral anti-fungal) for a couple of more months. I had been taking Voriconazole since my 2nd transplant so it's nothing new for me. He also took a look at the sites where I had my shingles and determined that they were 100% healed. I'm still having occasional sharp shooting nerve pain in those areas, which he said could take months to go away and in some cases it never goes away completely. Overall he was happy with how I'm doing and I'm scheduled to see him again a month from today for a follow-up.

After that I went to see my nurse practitioner and oncologist. It was so nice to see them after almost a month of not seeing them. They confirmed that it was okay for me to get my chemo today. The computers were down at the time that I saw them so they weren't able to look at my CT in detail to see if there had been any changes in my chest/liver masses due to not having chemo for a while. I'm supposed to call them next week to get more detailed results.

The last few days I have been extremely tired. I'm not sure if it's from going back to work after everything my body went through or if it has something to do with tapering down my prednisone even further. I thought that maybe my red blood count was low, but it actually went up since I was in the hospital so that's not the cause of my fatigue. Hopefully as the long weekend goes by I will regain my strength and energy.

Chris and I usually spend Thanksgiving with his parent's, but since they're out of town this year, we have no major plans. My dad is planning to make some mole, mexican rice, and beans tomorrow so we will get to have a yummy Mexican feast instead (which I will very much enjoy since I don't care for turkey, gravy, stuffing, and all the rest of the traditional Thanksgiving foods). I made some bread pudding tonight (with semisweet chocolate, white chocolate, and Bailey's Irish Cream) for dessert...yummy!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!