Have been taking neulasta(something that stimulates your bones to produce massive amounts of white blood cells) shots 2x daily since I got out of the hospital about 10 days ago and one of the fun side effects is massive bone pain and a headache that mimics a migraine. So have been spending my days in dark rooms trying to sleep as much as possible to help the time pass as quickly as possible.
Since I was released they have been checking my counts every other day and thankfully my white blood cell count has started to rise, platelets dropped to 30 yesterday or about 10-15% of a normal person so been a great contributor to me being able to sleep so much ha.
Post my blood work tomorrow they should have a pretty good idea of when they are going to collect my cells. If I had to guess it would be sometime Thursday for a start with collection taking anywhere from a day to 5-6. Also this week have all my pre-transplant tests, CT scan, EKG, chest x-ray and the all important PET scan. Get the results of the PET scan at 9am on Friday so exciting but also scary.
Scary because it will show if I am in remission or not and if not how close I am to remission. If I am in complete remission then onto transplant the following week with hopefully a quick stop at home to visit with Aidan. If not then onto some other chemo depending upon what the transplant doctors feel. If you are of the praying type please pray for complete remission. From all of the studies if you enter transplant in complete remission then 5 year living/cure rates are around 65%, if you go into it only in partial remission then the rate drops dramatically to 15% so very important for me to reach complete remission.
Will write more when I know more and these darned headaches go away.
We have you in our thoughts and prayers. The side effects of the Neulasta are pretty typical. Adam had some of the same issues, I know that doesn't help but we hear feel for you.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely in my prayers Charles, looking forward to the good news!!!
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