SPECIAL EDITION POST!

Welp, I spent the majority of the day today either in transit to/from my doctor’s office or waiting for stuff to happen once in the office. I’m certainly no stranger to cooling my heels while waiting for meds/nurses/procedures/doctors so this didn’t come as much of a shock. I’d also been warned last week that Dr. Santiago typically runs at least an hour behind while seeing patients in-office because of his preference for spending as much time as possible with his patients. I appreciate this and planned accordingly, packing a lunch, water, my iPad, a book, and a light blanket for the infusion room, which gets cold if you’re just sitting there hooked up to an IV drip. Even so, I arrived at about 11:25am for appointment times of 11:45 (blood draw), 12:15pm (doctor) and 1:15 (chemo infusion) and didn’t leave until 4:00pm. BLURGH. Long boring day.

The good news is that my blood cell counts seem to be recovering nicely. My hemoglobin levels are at 11.5 and the low end of normal range is 12. My hemoglobin is actually higher now than it was four years ago when my GP suggested the possibility of me seeing a hematologist, which I never did. I’m beginning to think now that something wasn’t right with my bone marrow then but it hadn’t yet developed into full-metal leukemia at the time. Hindsight, right? Ugh. Anyway, Dr. Santiago was VERY pleased with the rest of my numbers and my progress, which was quite reassuring given that I’d been in a bit of a tailspin since I found out last week how many pills I’d be taking at home. That has turned out to be not nearly as awful as I’d thought and the oral chemo dosages are very low. All 14 teeny-weeny tablets of the Methotrexate only add up to 35mg, which is NOTHING compared to the dosage I was getting in the hospital. That’s the one I was mainly worried about because they all have to be taken in one day, although I cheated and divided them up into two doses of seven pills taken about 12 hours apart. I had NO idea how the whole lot taken at once would affect my stomach and I didn’t really fancy the idea of suddenly having to pull over and puke while driving on I-35. I may experiment next week with wharking them down in one go, being sure to take my anti-nausea meds first, of course!😄