Well, it was a really rough couple of weeks. The news is good though.
Last week, I couldn’t understand why I was so tired. All the other symptoms of my last dose of chemotherapy were clearing up, albeit slowly. I just kept falling asleep after trying to do anything. Washing the dishes necessitated a three hour nap. Turns out, for the first time in a while, my platelet count dropped into the 30s. They transfuse you to make sure you have enough blood at a count of 20; normal is 150-450. We discovered this the day of my MRI.
I’m still keeping my PICC line, alas. It is a hassle to maintain, and still hurts. It is also preventing me from swimming, which is the only reliable way to manage the pain from the lymphedema. Hopefully, we will get all that sorted out soon. My oncologist is quite right that they don’t want to risk putting in another port while my blood is still upset, and my veins are still recovering. She has suggested that I try a peripheral stick for my next dose of immunotherapy, before they take the PICC line out.
The result of my MRI are pretty good though. My lymph nodes that were angry are back to a normal size. The mysterious dense tissue behind them is shrinking too. The chemotherapy worked. I have a follow-up MRI of my liver, which looks pretty sad/mad about the poisoning.
My best friend sent me a massive care package from Grandpa’s Cheese Barn to celebrate my return to real food. This was a little bit premature, perhaps, but we opened the garlic cheddar nevertheless. God, I missed cheese. (Why couldn’t I eat cheese you ask? One, everything tasted weird and two, I was super dehydrated and a little constipated for all of my chemo. So. Cheese was not appealing.)
I started my first dose of immunotherapy on Tuesday. My platelets were still low at 119, but no so low that it was a risk to my life to get treatment. It is a drug I’ve had an allergic reaction to in the past, so I got the industrial dose of benadryl and a longer infusion time. I could hardly stay awake for different reasons than the week before. My husband jokes that I have carcolepsy. On long road trips, he makes me read him books so we can both stay awake. He put on an audio book and let me sleep this time.
I’ll keep you up to date about how treatment is going and post more dresses soon.