another tuesday, another can of chemo

ahhh its tuesday...
must mean a trip to store to pick up another can of chemotherapy..

so off to the stanford university cancer center we go..


8:15am: arrived for our 8:00am appt... imagine that

8:25am: seated for a blood draw from nurse christy

8:35am: heading downstairs for our 9:00am appt with dr. carlson. this is the first appt with dr. carlson in the past 4 weeks. we are now visiting him once a month.


hopefully trish's blood counts are good today. we gave her 4 shots of Neupogen (Filgrastim) this past week, as opposed to the three shots during the previous two weeks... her counts were borderline last week, we hope this wont be the case today.

keep your fingers crossed...

results should be back in an hour or so..

ill post back after the visit with the doc...



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update #1: 12:00pm
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9:25am - 10:50am: met with dr. telli, and discussed a little bit of everything from blood, surgery options, chemo schedule for the coming months, food, alternative medicine, vitamins, etc..
she also referred us to a surgical oncologist as well as a plastic surgeon.

it was nice to get caught up with dr. telli, as we haven't seen any of trish's doctors in the past month.

dr. carlson is out of the office today, so we setup an appointment to check in with him prior to next weeks chemo.


drumroll....

trish's blood counts are back up :)
there will be taxol today


blood counts:

white blood cells, Absolute neutrophil count (ANC):
--------------------------------------------------------------------
was 1.47
is 6.05


red blood cells, hematocrit (HCT):
--------------------------------------------------------------------
was 28.2
is 28.9



trish is litte bit anemic, but her red blood cell count has been down since beginning chemo.
this can be a result of being pregnant with caden, as pregnancies can deplete the body of iron and the body can take several years to recover. to help this, she will begin taking some iron supplements.

trish will continue receiving the nuepogen shots, four times week to keep her white blood count up. she isn't too thrilled about this, as lately this has been the hardest part of the treatment. the shots make her really achy in her bones (its all that marrow making some whiteys..)

there are corresponding drugs for red counts, Procrit or Epogen, but they are not recommended for those undergoing treatment for breast cancer.


11:10am: trish got her chemo chair... #C3
11:40am: nurse carol began trish's premeds of decadron and pepcid
12:05pm: begin the benadryl... might as well tap a bottle of wine, as this makes her loooopy...


ill give you another update later after she begins the chemo...


trish's mom, ria, is joining us today...
here is a pic taken a minute ago:








---------------------------------
update #2: 12:30pm
---------------------------------
12:30pm: premeds are done... trish is hooked up to the taxol.

the harp lady also just came in with her 5' tall harp..
shes strumming some tunes while trish is getting ready for la la land...

ETA of getting out of here is 3pm...

stay tuned..


---------------------------------
update #3: 3:00pm
---------------------------------
2:00pm taxol finished up, began on the herceptin
3:00pm: herceptin done
3:10pm: nurse carol flushed the mediport with anticoagulant, heparin


heading home...


another day in the bag...