Saturday, May 23, 2009

Dude, where's my white blood cells?

Shanna and Naomi 12 years ago before Shanna's prom. Naomi: age 6. Now Naomi towers over her.

It was Naomi's last day of high school yesterday though a project remains unfinished. I get a break from overseeing homework for a while so less stress for me. Yay! The graduation ceremony is in 10 days. Shanna is still planning to drive out to it but won't stay here-she's staying with the in-laws.

In connection with the chemobrain study, they sent me the result of my blood work. Less FSH. High FSH levels are associated with hot flashes but they gradually stop after a while. Thankfully I haven't had much trouble with hot flashes since I threw the Prem-pro away thinking that it gave me cancer. My red blood count climbed, not as high as before but above what they were when I was pre-menopausal but the white blood count sunk lower than it was on chemo. True I skipped the last Neulasta and maybe radiation screws up the white count but it should have returned. Monocytes are high though-inflammmation? infection?

Running still is fairly easy. I worry about stress fractures if I increase too much. Also part of the sole of one foot is numb-residual Taxol induced nerve damage? Or running injury? But as it is numb, no pain.

One of the moms came over for a pleasant evening on the patio before those pesky mosquitoes came out. It hasn't rained in 5 days but all the rain before has made these things really annoying. I had to cut short my walk in the woods today after running as they were so bad.

More readings from the TNBC page: An article saying that bis-phosphonates (such as Zometa, Evista, etc) cut down on recurrences for hormone negs more than for hormone pos--just the opposite of what I read before. Small patient population so I will ignore it.
More annoying: some article about triple negative bc in general saying that only occasionally does chemotherapy work-most of the time it doesn't so too bad for us. I won't even cite this article-it is from the 'popular press'. Hopefully the newly diagnosed do not run into this type of article because it will depress them.

2 comments:

Sarah Sullivan said...

Geesh they grow up so fast!
Hoping you are feeling well, Sarah

Sara Diana said...

I wish I could keep up the running but I had to be careful before cancer, If I over did it, ran in the heat or dont drink enough I get a migrane attack and thats what happens when I overdo things on chemo. I am just keeping up loving life and planning, preparing, reading my running mags, monitoring the races and I will get there again. It is great to read about how you are doing running through treatment because I tried and tried to find out information and advice and couldnt
You are an inspiration!

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