Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Leukemia Sucks - September 16

Leukemia sucks! Thought the last day of erwina and maintenance phase in sight was going to be be better than this. Luke feels and looks drained. He is pale, tired and having episodes of nausea. No appetite and stomach has a constant rumble.

Came to clinic today for what we thought would be the last erwina harpooning. Counts showed hemoglobin was down so he will have an all dayer getting two units of blood and erwinia. Short term benefit is the blood comes with IV benadryl which will put him to sleep for the afternoon.

After the blood and the erwinia today, Luke is off all chemo until his counts come back. He then starts maintenance. Hope getting the blood today will accelerate the bounce back of his hemoglobin and pick up in his energy level.

Learning some about the maintenance phase. The first three months of maintenance are the same; steroids for five days, one intravenous dose of vincristine each month, daily mercaptopurine and methotrexate orally once a week. Methotrexate is given intrathecally once every three months during the first year of maintenance. We were told the start of maintenance can be rough. After all the chemo the bone marrow was described as being "tired" and sometimes the chemo doses need to be determined by trial and error as the calculated dose drops counts too much.

The November 7th blood drive is moving forward. STILL NEED DONORS ESPECIALLY LATE IN THE DAY. If you are not on the donor email list be aware blood donors will be entered into a drawing for a 32" VIZIO FHDTV. The concert the evening of the blood drive is a go, just hoping its a nice fall evening.

1 comment:

  1. Hi there, feeling-less-than handsome one. I'm here. Wishing you could just take a nap -- a really nice one with good dreams and happy thoughts -- and then you go right to maintenance city where you have lots of fun and get to do only what you want to do when you want to do it and it does not require anyone medically-related, well, perhaps you mom and sis, but that's altogether different, right?

    If I am not making any sense, it's because I, myself have been laid up for a few days with a flu or something so perhaps my fever is talking.

    Oh, Luke, by the way, Mikey is re-reading that "favorite book" by Tucker Max. He also gave a copy to his best bud over the weekend for his b-day.

    Love to you!

    Aunt Jacquita

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