Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Bum deal today!! My parents came by my house this morning so that my mom could watch the kids and my dad drove me to the clinic for my Dr's appt and infusion. Traffic was a mess this morning so we got there a few minutes late and then when the Dr came in to see me he said that they couldn't give me the infusion today because my platelet count was too low! Since I'm receiving the Avastin as part of a clinical trial we have to follow all of their protocol under what conditions I can and cannot receive treatment. The Dr who I met with said that if it wasn't for the study they would give me the infusion anyways because the Avastin doesn't affect the platelet count at all and doesn't really have anything to do with it. The first comment that the Dr made when he walked into the examining room was that I looked tired! I said that I was hoping it was due to a low red blood cell count and after he looked at those numbers he thought that that was probably the case and that my number should rebound here in the next week or two. We think that all of the chemo treatments have finally caught up with me and it is taking me longer this time around to rebound. Even though I wasn't able to receive my infusion today, I'm just glad that this didn't happen on one of my chemotherapy days because that really would have affected things more since that is an all day treatment. So the plan is to have me come back in on Monday and hopefully my platelet count will be back up by then (my number today was 59,000 and it needs to be at 75,000 or higher - normal range is 170,000-450,000). I will go straight to the infusion room and have my labs drawn there and if everything is in the acceptable range then I will have the infusion, if not then I will have to come back in on Wednesday to meet with the doctor. The only problem with Monday is that they had already scheduled me to have a mammogram on Monday at a clinic closer to my home, so they rescheduled that for early afternoon and my infusion will be in the morning (hopefully).

The Dr also said that he had looked at the results of the CT scan and that there were no signs of cancer evident in the scan. He said that there was one spot in the liver where the resection took place that showed some abnormality, but after talking with the radiology tech they were confident that it is just due to the healing still taking place in the liver and that the abnormality was consistent with someone who has had liver surgery. They will keep a close eye on that spot in future scans, but at this point it is not a concern.

After the meeting with the doctor ended I had to go over to the room where my labs are done so that they could de-access my port. So much for leaving it in!! It was a little bit of a pain during the night because it was a little uncomfortable to have my arms close together which is how I usually sleep. I finally had the thought to put a pillow in front of my chest so that I could wrap my arm around it and not have it touching my other arm.