December 5th - The lost post

I am so done with chemo! Yesterday was the last of the three. And as much as I dislike the chemo, I had to cajole the doctors to go through with it.

Thanksgiving evening I left Dave & Kathy's house early - even before dessert. I crawled in to bed with a wee fever. Over the next 12 hours it got as high as 101.5, one degree over the "Call your oncologist immediately or go to the emergency room and be sure to tell them you're on chemo" level. I stayed home instead, and by Saturday morning was back to normal. But my pre-chemo blood test on Tuesday indicated a problem. I was grossly deficient in platelets (good for blood clotting when you're cut) and grievously deficient in white blood cells (good for fighting infection). The chemo charge nurse called and left me a message to not bother coming to my chemo apppointment because it had been canceled and would most likely be eliminated because it was the last one.

So I called, confessed my Thanksgiving fever sin, and declared that there must be a way to get it done. I hadn't come this far to not 'take my medicine'. It strikes me as odd that I was so attached to a treatment regimen that I had earlier decried as a little bit random. I suppose that it evolved into the 'right thing' once I started. I ended up with 3 sizeable lectures regarding the fragility of my health and the sheer stupidity of my aversion to the Thanksgiving day emergency room visit. I made all sorts of promises and got my wish to get my last chemo.

Dr. Lampenfield, the Obi Wan Kenobi of my radiation visualization, was very cool about the whole thing. He blamed it all on the chemo. Six more radiation sessions and then heal up and hold tight for the CT scan and associated blood tests on Jan 5.