After a couple of successful injections of G-CSF (thank you, Virginia for the shots, and thank you, modern medicine, for powerfully effective drugs), my white blood counts jumped from a meager 1.5 k/ul to a whopping 12.6 (the normal range being between 4 and 11) practically overnight. I felt pretty invincible over the weekend, with more infection fighting cells in my body than I have had in a really long time. But, like the saying goes, all good things must eventually come to an end.
My white count is back to where it’s typically been… 2.0 k/ul. So, I’m back to plugging along, letting my bone marrow do the hard work without the help of growth factors. I’m good with it, even if it means more of a delay before being able to start my second round of consolidation. In fact, it reminds me of a beetle I observed while sitting outside the other day.
It was walking across the long expanse of our patio table with a dogged determination (being especially patient once I started to get involved and forced it to stop for a photo). It just kept on walking, destination unknown to me, and perhaps unimportant… just kept walking, pushing forward.
So, we, too, learn to just go with the flow, moving forward. No amount of stress, mental bending or finger crossing is going to make my bone marrow do anything other than what it is going to do.
Activities for this week include an echocardiogram on Thursday (make sure the chemotherapy hasn’t done any permanent damage to my heart), an EKG on Friday, and a scheduling appointment with the oncologist to determine the start date of my last (keeping my fingers crossed, despite what I just talked about — habits are hard to break) round of consolidation.
