The Icing On The Chemo

I am not sure how she does it. I feel like I take copious notes and I know I do not get all the information she gives me. How does my mom keep track of the schedule, the drugs, the tests. How does she pay attention to what the nurses are telling her while she sits in a recliner dressed up like a science experiment?

I have been bad about documenting mom's progress. It is true, "out of sight, out of mind". I suppose after our visit to DC in April I felt relieved. Mom had energy and responded well to the treatment. The inflammation was decreasing and the tumor was not growing. I felt safe. Don't get me wrong, I knew "we", meaning mom, was not out of the woods. I didn't want my thoughts, or our phone conversations to be surrounded by this intruder. That is how I looked at this cancer. The intruder that took my mother's immortality. Isn't that what we think of our parents? That they will live forever and be just a call away forever? Or is that what is known as "taking it for granted".

They finally figured out the intruder had a name. Not just cancer. We now now the intruder's full name. You know how the media tacks on a middle name or initial to the criminal. Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wayne Gacy, etc. Mom's intruder, AKA Adenocarcinoma of the lung. This type of cancer is very common and is typical in non smokers and you guessed it; those that have quit. Makes you think twice about quitting huh?

The new information has allowed mom's doctors to have a more defined approach to her treatment. The new regime includes three weeks of treatment; one on each Friday. Then a Friday off. The desire is to shrink the tumor to a very small size. Hopefully small enough that other methods can be introduced to the fight. Radiation and Cyber Knife are two that are in the discussion fold at this time.

Although it is a base line, her blood work is looking good. The real story will be told with a CT scan being done in four weeks.One of the cancer factors that was 1996, dropped to 589, then to 529, went up to 645 and now is 208!! That is great news. The LDH that was at 25 is now at 16.9. So she currently has good factors. The white cell count had dropped below 1000 but corrected itself and is now up to 1108. They will not give her shots until after it stays below 1000 for 2 weeks. This concerns me a little because mom is prone to infection anyway. She always has a sinus infection and for the last year or so was always on an antibiotic. The red blood cells are good but a little thin-they are running a new lab test this week to determine if they want to start mom on liquid iron. This is not that surprising since mom has had issues with thin blood as long as I can remember. What can be an issue here is hemorrhaging. Mom hemorrhaged pretty badly giving birth to my sister at only 5-ish pounds and was experiencing some nose bleeds when they changed her treatment a few weeks back. She had a staph infection in her nose and they ended up having to cauterize some blood vessels up there. As if she didn't have enough going on.

The doctor is very pleased with the results to date and is in shock mom is still working 10-12 hour days while going through chemo. He mentioned in his whole case load he has two patients that are still working.

Oh wait! Make that one...Mom got FIRED today.
*That is all I am allowed to say at this point. I will update you all when I can.