Time that wasn't

OK…. Let me see if I can catch you up on the events of the past two weeks.

As I had indicated in my last blog posts, things had reached a frenzied pace as we tried to complete our final college campus visits with Sasha in advance of my starting chemo. We returned from Colorado on 2/10, I had the medi-port inserted on 2/11, and then chemo began on 2/12.

Although the chemo process kicked off without a moment for a breather things were really very much under control. Nausea was controlled via the usual “as needed” use of zofran and decadron and the new side affects we were seeing from the new chemo protocol were little more then a nuisance. I was getting some minor tingling in my forearms/hands and issues related to touching/drinking/breathing cold were minor since I was working from home.

However, things started to get a bit interesting toward the end of that first week of chemo. Apparently the simple cold that I came home from Colorado with decided to “have a party”, as Dr. Lampert said, when chemo drove my white blood cell (WBC) count to a low of 0.8. By Friday, 2/20 my temperature hit a high of 102.3 and initially we were able to keep it in check with Tylenol. I ran a temperature on Sunday and then on Monday, 2/23 my temperature hit 100.9. We called Dr. Richards office for an emergency appointment and I kind of knew what was going to happen next. Dr. Richards said that if I was experiencing either a fever OR abnormally low WBC counts that we could have avoided a hospital stay. But that I had BOTH there was no way he could avoid admitting me to good ole St. Peter’s University Hospital.

We arrived at St. Peter’s late Monday, 2/23 and the process of poking, prodding, and constant IV antibiotics began. I had blood cultures taken as well as both a chest X-ray and CT scan to take a closer look at my cough. The oncology floor at St. Peter’s is brand new and because of my low WBC count I was classified as “neutropenic” and given a private room. As hospital situations go I’d view this as about as cushy as it gets. The oncology nurses were all absolutely terrific. In addition to the antibiotics I was also given daily injections of Neupogen to boost my white blood cells as well as a blood thinner to avoid blood clots.

The punch line is that the CT scan showed that I have pneumonia. Luckily the consensus of the doctors yesterday was that there was no reason to keep me in the hospital and they discharged me on Friday, 2/27. My WBC count had come up into normal range and I hadn’t run a temperature since early in the week. I will be on two different oral antibiotics for another 10 days and I’m trying to make sure that I’m coughing with gusto to keep things loose and to break things up as best I can.

I guess another punch line is that chemo treatment #2 will remain on schedule for this coming Thursday. As has been discussed with Dr. Richards, and the other doctors from his group that visited me this week, we will be tweaking things a bit to try and manage the impact of this chemo protocol on my WBC.

Another significant tidbit to pass along is that I’m officially back in hairless status. I noticed that my hair had started to fall out while I was in the hospital. Although I had an inclination to shave my head while I was there in the hospital there really was no way to do that very comfortably. Amy helped me with it this morning and once again I look a lot like the caricature on our Mintz’s Mentschen cycling jersey.

So, I’m sorry for the lack of information these past two weeks but you can see now how crazy it’s been. I will try to do a better job going forward. But thanks to everyone for the emails and texts as they helped to keep my spirit up.