3rd Round

Well yesterday was the third round of Chemo. Bonnie's neutrophil levels were still running low. So they kept the same levels of the medication that they did on the 2ND treatment. They didn't get to meet with the doctor this time. Which was a little frustrating because there were questions to be asked.
Once they got home Bonnie took a long nap, and didn't eat. Today she has been sleeping a lot. She is sore and nauseous. She gets a weird craving for a few days after treatment, McDonald's fish sandwiches and fries. We are more then happy to go get those for her so she will actually eat something.
Bonnie and Kevin spend 5 days last week in Las Cruces, New Mexico for the Aggie basketball tournament. They enjoyed the trip and were able to spend some well deserved time away from home.
The house has been in the process of a remodel for several months. So while they were gone the main part of the house was painted. Then today new carpet was laid. The next step is for us to find new furniture that Mom likes. This will be an interesting feat with not being able to go out for very long since she gets tired so quickly. But we will get it done.
Thank you for the prayers and thoughts.
Merissa

2nd Treatment Day

What a long day waiting for doctors. First we went to the Radiologist on the first floor of the cancer building. We saw a Dr. Sause and they had us fill out another patient information history form. Why they can’t keep one updated on their whole network is beyond me. Anyone see a business opportunity here???

They had Bonnie change in one of their 5-6 changing rooms and put her clothes in one of 10-12 lockers. This was very different. I guess they have people do this because it takes longer to change than to get their radiation treatment. So they are in and out pretty quick.

We didn’t understand why they needed her to change to consult getting radiation treatments. After waiting for 20+ minutes he checked her lungs and abdomen and then did a rectal exam to see how far up the resection was. Then he read the surgery reports and checked the CT scan pictures taken 1-2-08. And we read with him the notes made of that scan. It clearly stated that there was something there. Our primary care physician told us there was nothing there, so she couldn’t get Bonnie in for an emergency colonoscopy. That’s why Bonnie set up her own appointments to get it done. And after one cancellation she finally got it done on the 16^th.

Anyway, the doctor thought it would be good to do radiation therapy because there could be ‘cancer seedlings’ out in the pelvis area. The radiation would help treat any free radical cancer cells along with the chemo. The affects aren’t very nice for the 3-6% increase in benefits. Mostly that is diarrhea, accelerating menopause, and possible similar after affects for life. The oncologist and surgeon told us previously they didn’t think it needed to be done. So they will consult each other and decide what to do. Then we need to decide if we want to do it. (They have decided that radiation is needed after the chemo is done, we’ll see)

Then we went upstairs to get chemo going and they put us in an exam room to talk to the doctor first. We waited 40+ minutes for the doc and then talked them into letting her get started with her treatment and have the doctor come talk to us while doing that. So she started her treatment an hour later than planned.

I ran and bought Bonnie’s favorite Philly Cheese Steak from the Philadelphian and brought it back for our lunch.

They insert a big short needle into her new purple heart and take blood and dispense the chemo into it. The needle stays in for the treatment and 2 days after for the other chemical to dispense with the pump. The numbing cream worked this time and she didn't feel the needle. Her white blood count for fighting infection was a 1.4 and they want it to be 1.5 or higher. Her previous number was 3.5. They decided to go ahead with treatment since she felt good, but they did reduce the amount of one of the drugs so hopefully it won’t be low for the next one. The treatment was uneventful and we got out at 3:30.

The doctor did proscribe medication for when Bonnie has night sweats and also an antibiotic for her to have in case she gets a fever from something while we are on our trip to New Mexico next week. BTW, we finally got it arranged to have our house painted while we are gone so she won’t have to smell the fumes. But she will have to smell new carpet when we get back when that gets installed. We were supposed get this done in January, but some other matters came up.

Her side affects from this treatment have been slightly milder than the first go round. But she is still very tired.

We are checking into getting the gene testing done at the next treatment. The insurance has to approve of paying for it so we will see what happens there. We still cannot get the percentage of recurrence from our oncologist. He said he would work it up again from our previous visit and then talked about it with us and said as he was leaving that he just told us again. I will try to pin him down next time. But, thinking about it, there is probably no way at all to know that or estimate what it would be, so….

Thanks again for all your encouragement and support and love.

Love the Rawlings