Day 22 and Bloody Knitting
If my white cells go up this week (now 22 days since the beginning of the 2nd chemo), as they’re expecting, I’ll get discharged for a couple of weeks. But we cannot get our hopes up, since we got so slammed down by things not being true before. If after a few days the numbers haven’t moved, they may do the bone marrow stuff to see if there’s anything “going on”. They’re still watching for me to have any sort of infection, which they said are usually first indicated by a fever (temp over 38.0C / 100.4F).
If I’m able to leave, after those 2 weeks (or whatever) have gone by I’ll come back in to the Day Ward so they can do a bone marrow aspiration (the liquid) and bone marrow biopsy (scraping some of the jelly-like marrow). They try to hold off doing them while the growth stimulating hormone shots are happening because they can skew the results. The bone marrow tests are done in order to verify that I’d actually be in remission—or find I’m not. No idea about so many different parts of this.
Ker-thunk, down one click
Platelets were 16 yesterday, moved down only by 1 point to 15 today. A chat with the doctors today had “anything over 10” being the line they’re watching in particular. I was intrigued—perhaps more than them—at the movement being so small. But sometimes those are helpful, too. (Said the tortoise to the hare.)
Let them eat cake?!
Yesterday I got my long-awaited piece of chocolate cake. I forgot to include the news yesterday; oops! And the proof:
Tonight’s experiment was ordering the other idea: carrot cake! And it arrived. It’s a muffin, not a cake, but I don’t care; carrot cake, carrot cake muffin, either way it’s a treat I hadn’t know I could get before now.
Knitting milestone achieved
For those of you playing along, last time we spoke I was anticipating my first journey into the dark underworld of knitting with more than one ball of yarn. I think it worked—mostly. I’ll ask Elana to audit it when she’s next in to visit, but for the moment I think it’s okay. The book Knitting Without Tears which E was kind enough to bring in had enough—I think—to get me through the scary-looking doors to the next frightening level of my scarf project. No, I don’t know how you can start to twist text about knitting onto the possible path of a horror story.
The knitting needles quivered, almost by themselves. Their points twitched ever so slightly under her eyelids, those small bits of skin being pulled up and away from her eyes. Now wide awake, she found herself staring straight into the face of…
Oops, sorry about that. I think I dropped a stitch. Or something.
Nevermind.
Forget I even mentioned it.
