No hospital visits for me
I just found out that my dad is in the hospital, but I can't really go down and visit him. My neutriphil count is too low, and the last place I should be is visiting in a hospital. I wish I could be down there in Peoria, but I trust that my brothers have it under control.
Now I just have to get these white blood cells higher so I can get back to normal. I've gotten spoiled not having to go into the Cancer Care Center and having good blood counts the past two months. It's hard to have to be so careful again. Hopefully this will be a short lived trend. I liked the freedom I had gained, and I don't want to give it up for any significant period of time.
Thursday, October 24, 2002
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (revisited)
The good news is that it's been 10 weeks since my last transfusion and my platelet count today was 130 and my HgB was 13.0!!!
The bad news is that my WBC was still 2.3 with the neutriphils only 0.5, so they sent me home for the second week in a row without treatment. I'm doing a little interim Neupogen til next Monday to see if they can get it up high enough to treat me. The day after treatment I can get the Neulasta again, which has worked so well. They can't give me Neulasta now or they would have to delay treatment for another 14 days. Don't want to do that.
The Ugly is that I have found a new large growth on my back on my shoulder blade. It's almost 2 inches across. I don't know if it's suddenly turned up or if it's been there growing awhile. How often do I look at my back??? I found it by accident on Tuesday because there was a little light bruise on top of it that I hadn't remembered seeing before, and I wasn't aware of hitting anything in that spot. As soon as I touched it, I could feel the big lump. A real, "oh sh*t" experience.
I don't know if it's a lymph node (strange place for one...) or if it's another of the subcutaneous extra-nodal tumors I've had on my lower back. They took out one of those for a biopsy back in Feb and that's how we found out that my low grade had transformed to large cell.
I see the doc on Monday and we'll talk more about it. The nurse looked it over today and talked to the doc about it. Unfortunately he was in an emergency at the hospital or I would have marched right over to him and bared my shoulder... However, since a couple of the other ones are on my butt, that might not have been a wise plan after all. He'd want to check those too.
It makes me nervous that I've had to delay treatment for two weeks with this new growth there, but I can't do much about it, so I'm deciding not to worry. I'm concentrating on my great platelet count instead. And I'll plan a fun and busy weekend to distract myself til Monday.
The good news is that it's been 10 weeks since my last transfusion and my platelet count today was 130 and my HgB was 13.0!!!
The bad news is that my WBC was still 2.3 with the neutriphils only 0.5, so they sent me home for the second week in a row without treatment. I'm doing a little interim Neupogen til next Monday to see if they can get it up high enough to treat me. The day after treatment I can get the Neulasta again, which has worked so well. They can't give me Neulasta now or they would have to delay treatment for another 14 days. Don't want to do that.
The Ugly is that I have found a new large growth on my back on my shoulder blade. It's almost 2 inches across. I don't know if it's suddenly turned up or if it's been there growing awhile. How often do I look at my back??? I found it by accident on Tuesday because there was a little light bruise on top of it that I hadn't remembered seeing before, and I wasn't aware of hitting anything in that spot. As soon as I touched it, I could feel the big lump. A real, "oh sh*t" experience.
I don't know if it's a lymph node (strange place for one...) or if it's another of the subcutaneous extra-nodal tumors I've had on my lower back. They took out one of those for a biopsy back in Feb and that's how we found out that my low grade had transformed to large cell.
I see the doc on Monday and we'll talk more about it. The nurse looked it over today and talked to the doc about it. Unfortunately he was in an emergency at the hospital or I would have marched right over to him and bared my shoulder... However, since a couple of the other ones are on my butt, that might not have been a wise plan after all. He'd want to check those too.
It makes me nervous that I've had to delay treatment for two weeks with this new growth there, but I can't do much about it, so I'm deciding not to worry. I'm concentrating on my great platelet count instead. And I'll plan a fun and busy weekend to distract myself til Monday.
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