Last Monday should have been my last “red devil” treatment. I got through treatments 1, 2 and 3 rather easily and my neutrophil count was going strong! I get a neulasta injection which stimulates bone marrow production with the “red devil” treatment so I honestly thought my days of low white blood cells and neutrophils were long gone.
Ha!
I was truly shocked when Dr. Gupta told me my neutrophils were slightly less than 1 last Monday. In the weeks prior, my counts were above 5! Initially, he was going to give me treatment anyways but after talking it through, we decided waiting one week to let my body recover would be the best course of action.
Today, I woke up fully planning on finishing out my course of chemotherapy. I was mentally prepared and felt physically ready to go! Unfortunately, my blood counts were worse and my neutrophils were down to .3
I’m unfortunately back in the critically low range which means my body was not in a position to receive chemotherapy.. again.
I am now 4 weeks out past my last chemotherapy and every time I get treatment, I am delaying my surgery. My body has to recover in order for me to get surgery. At this point, it’s looking like my body will need 6 weeks at a minimum to recover enough to allow me to get surgery.
So, potential shift in plans coming my way.
I did go ahead and get my immunotherapy infusion. On Friday, I will go and get an ultrasound to check on the tumor.
From there, we will determine how the tumor is responding to chemotherapy. If the tumor is completely gone from imaging, we may forego the last chemo all together and go straight to surgery, or we may go straight to surgery and do the last chemo afterwards since I am “high risk of reoccurrence”. We may wait for my counts to return to normal levels and do chemo.. and then surgery, or maybe we will do surgery and if there is more cancer we will do radiation and a different chemo.
So, right now I feel a little bit in limbo. I hate not having a definite plan… even if it’s only for a week or so that I don’t have a plan.
I am bummed because I really do NOT want to miss a chemo. It’s kind of like baking a loaf of banana bread and leaving out the eggs. Will the banana bread turn out okay without the eggs? Eh, maybe but I certainly don’t want to find out!
I need to place my trust in my team of doctors and more importantly, god!
Prayer Requests:
1. Please pray for my counts to recover and that I do not get any serious infections while my counts are low.
2. Please pray for my team of doctors as they make a decision in my cancer plan.
3. Please pray that the tumor has continued to shrink when I go in for an ultrasound later in the week.
Keep My Eyes Above the Waves 
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