Topping and Tailing
When I woke up this morning I felt a slight tenderness in my neck and brushing my teeth on one side was just a little tender too. I was due to see the doctor's at the full clinic today so I had the ideal opportunity to mention it.
The clinic was really busy when I got there, literally standing room only. They saw over 60 patients today. I developed a nasty headache whilst there but I got my temperature checked and it was fine. A couple of paracetamol eased the headache whilst I waited an hour and 20 mins past my appointment time.
I saw the main registrar who treated me when I had my last cycle of Chemo. He felt my neck and looked in my mouth and said he couldn't see anything obvious and to just monitor my temperature closely.
He checked my blood counts. My haemoglobin had come back up from 9.1 to 11.5 which was better; though still below the range of 13-17 it was not low enough to warrant another transfusion as my symptoms had eased. My neutrophils were recovering slowly up from 0.0 to 0.2
Given all this he decided my blood system needed a little helping hand to recover and prescribed a course of GCSF injections for me, one a day for five days. These are the same as I had when I had my stem cell harvest back in November. Then it was 3 injections a day to actually over stimulate the Granulocyte Colonies so the stem cells could be harvested.
This time it is just to give them a hand in producing more white cells for me. I administer the injections myself. Once you've done the first one and got over the idea of sticking a needle in your flesh it's fine and virtually painless. The pain comes in the the hips, thighs and sternum as they sulk about all these extra cells. Mind you I might not get so much of that this time because I am taking a smaller dose ( 480mg instead of 1080mg).
I will continue to have my bloods monitored 3 times a week and I'm booked back in to the main clinic for next Tuesday when hopefully things will have started to recover. This has effectively put another week's delay on me starting my next round of chemo, so it's now w/c 2nd June at the earliest.
The doctor also suggested I rest up as much as possible for a few days to give my body the best chance of coping with everything that is going on. So I won't be logging on to work until probably next Tuesday after the bank holiday and I'll try and keep away from the computer in general so expect only brief status reports on here for a while.
The clinic was really busy when I got there, literally standing room only. They saw over 60 patients today. I developed a nasty headache whilst there but I got my temperature checked and it was fine. A couple of paracetamol eased the headache whilst I waited an hour and 20 mins past my appointment time.
I saw the main registrar who treated me when I had my last cycle of Chemo. He felt my neck and looked in my mouth and said he couldn't see anything obvious and to just monitor my temperature closely.
He checked my blood counts. My haemoglobin had come back up from 9.1 to 11.5 which was better; though still below the range of 13-17 it was not low enough to warrant another transfusion as my symptoms had eased. My neutrophils were recovering slowly up from 0.0 to 0.2
Given all this he decided my blood system needed a little helping hand to recover and prescribed a course of GCSF injections for me, one a day for five days. These are the same as I had when I had my stem cell harvest back in November. Then it was 3 injections a day to actually over stimulate the Granulocyte Colonies so the stem cells could be harvested.
This time it is just to give them a hand in producing more white cells for me. I administer the injections myself. Once you've done the first one and got over the idea of sticking a needle in your flesh it's fine and virtually painless. The pain comes in the the hips, thighs and sternum as they sulk about all these extra cells. Mind you I might not get so much of that this time because I am taking a smaller dose ( 480mg instead of 1080mg).
I will continue to have my bloods monitored 3 times a week and I'm booked back in to the main clinic for next Tuesday when hopefully things will have started to recover. This has effectively put another week's delay on me starting my next round of chemo, so it's now w/c 2nd June at the earliest.
The doctor also suggested I rest up as much as possible for a few days to give my body the best chance of coping with everything that is going on. So I won't be logging on to work until probably next Tuesday after the bank holiday and I'll try and keep away from the computer in general so expect only brief status reports on here for a while.
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