I saw my local oncologist on Monday who ordered some additional blood test. My hemoglobin was down to 9.1 (men’s should be a min of 14) and my red cells were continuing to drop around 2.69 . Everything else was looking really good. I was suppose to have this additional test done on my blood and then come in for an IV of iron and a red cell shot. Rec’d a call today from the dr’s office saying that there was some number in my blood work that showed that I was resistant to the shots and therefore, it wouldn’t really help my numbers and that Cigna had refused to pay for the treatment. I’m to be retested next Tuesday to see if the numbers change. If they don’t, I hope to hear some alternatives. My energy level is decreasing although I don’t feel bad other than that.
If anything changes before then, I’ll write. Otherwise, it will be next Tuesday, October 2nd before I write again.
Brad
September 26th, 2007 at 03:26pm
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This Monday I went to see my family doc and ended up in the hospital again with that fever. I was released on Wednesday and thankfully I haven’t had any fever since but something new has taken its place. I have been very dizzy since the fever started last week with a couple of days in there that were totally clear. We have no idea what is making me feel like that. I’m drinking plenty of water so it isn’t that. I went today to have my blood work done. My platelets have shot up to over 130K in the last two days but my neutrophils have dropped from 2,000 to 1,100 in that same time. Not sure what is up with that.
Appears I’ll be allowed to go back to work on Monday (I see my oncologist at 10am Monday morning and have blood work redone) and hopefully then everything will get back on track. This is getting very old for me and even more so for Tami. In case you didn’t know it, I think dealing with all of the cancer, cancer treatment and aftermath is harder on caregivers than it is on the patient.
Brad
September 21st, 2007 at 05:12pm
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I just wrote this awful blog. I thought I hit publish but now I can’t find it. I guess the good Lord didn’t want me to really publish the things I had said so he took it from my computer. Brad is back in the hospital (HEB) because the heavy duty antibiotics aren’t working and the fever is back. I am home to get a few things done but then heading back soon. I will write when I know more. If a blog called Frustration sets in shows up then that is the awful blog…..full of me ranting. Tami
September 17th, 2007 at 08:09pm
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I have just returned from getting my blood work done as a followup from the ER visit. ALL numbers have increased from 36 hours ago. They still aren’t worth getting too excited about but at least they are going up and not just some of them this time. I have been released to go back to work as of Monday (but just told to take it easy….yeh, right) and have to follow up twice next week to make sure we don’t still have a lingering problem…..
Here’s to resting for the next two days.
Brad
September 14th, 2007 at 02:50pm
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We just returned from the ER. I woke up this morning with 101.5 fever around 1am and we got up and went on in. My numbers have dropped significantly since 36 hours ago but they think it was the fever attacking my body. They gave me lots of fluids and a bag of Levoquin (antibiotic) and a RX for that same med in pill form for the next ten days.
Doc says no work until further notice so hopefully that means Monday and no more. Now off to get some sleep.
Brad
September 13th, 2007 at 08:55am
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I’ve been fighting a low grade fever today. I woke up this morning with 100.3 fever. It went down at school for a while but was back to the 100.3 just before we left to come home. The magic number with my doc is 100.5 for the ER. I haven’t hit that yet and hope I don’t. I think I’m just worn down. We’ve had meetings three of the 6 days I’ve been back with two of them lasting until around 7pm. That was simply too long of a day for me and I think I’m now paying the price. Thankfully the next two days are meetingless and we’ll be able to head home right after school.
My blood work did the same thing it did last week. Some numbers went up and some went down. Whites went down by 50% but red cell and hemoglobin went up to much better numbers. Still considered well under “normal” but getting better. My platelets went down a little which is a little confusing to me but they aren’t bad.
Hair – It’s funny, I didn’t care about it coming out but now that it won’t seem to grow back, I’m becoming impatient. Geeze, grow already will ya?
Brad
September 12th, 2007 at 08:19pm
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I had accidently seen an email to my wife when she asked me to check her email for something else. It said something on the title about not being able to make it for Sept 8th. I figured then that something was being planned but decided not to ask. I thought that a few of our friends or family had been asked to come over and celebrate the cancer being beat back…man, was I wrong. Appears my little girl has been busy again planning things and when she does, she goes big. We had about 70 people over Sat afternoon. My nephew, Heath, brought tons of BBQ from his Bodacious store and others brought sweets, drinks and such.
Before we went to sleep that night, Tami leaned over to me and said, “yeh, we don’t have any friends”. We both just laughed.
I’m continuing to feel better and stronger. I still can’t get the sleep I need but I presume that will come with time. I finally have one very small spot on the back/top of my head where some hair is TRYING to grow. Maybe if I get some of that hair paint for just $19.99 on TV it would help? Maybe not.
I get my blood work done tomorrow here in Irving. I’ve had one place show up on my left leg that would usually tell us that my plateletes are low but I can’t imagine that they are. We’ll see soon enough.
Until then…
Brad
September 10th, 2007 at 08:24am
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Other than a very sore back, I made it better than expected. I am very tired but not as much as I expected. It was really good to be back “home” with everyone at Farine.
I had my blood drawn at Baylor Irving…man they are fast. I had the numbers in five minutes. Everything is going in the right direction…just some is much slower to recover than others. Red cells and Hemoglobin are lagging behind but white cells and plateletes are doing great. I expect to get another shot soon for the hemoglobin but that should be all.
Can’t wait for tomorrow.
Brad
September 4th, 2007 at 08:58pm
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Tomorrow will be my first day back to work since March. I know that I’m a long way from being back to full strength but it’s time to get back to life. I’m a little concerned about making it tomorrow but I think that would be true no matter when I return so why not now. The school has been great about making things easy for me…they couldn’t be better.
For some reason I’m still not sleeping. Well, I know the reason. When you are use to taking an extended sleeping pill, an extended pain pill and a short term pain pill just to be able to sleep and everything is taken away except the long term sleeping pill, the body takes a while to adjust. I hope sooner than later.
Blood work tomorrow after school. Hopefully that will come back good. Here’s to a very uneventful and easy first day back tomorrow.
Brad
September 3rd, 2007 at 06:31pm
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