Good Tuesday Morning! If you are looking for a lesson on cancer treatment --here you go! Sorry its another long one. Hope you are having a fantastic start to your day!! Day 9 of whats called a HIDAC, High Dose Ara C, a chemo treatment plan to help me kick cancers ass. So far this is my 4th long stay here at Johns Hopkins. Ive been fighting since January. My neutrophils, the white blood cells responsible for fighting infection are at 270. Anything below 500 is what is called neutropenic, which means your body cant fight infection on its own. When I hit zero as my doctor said this morning… your immune system will be wiped out and anything you touch becomes a risk. Every time I go through this process I get very sick and really bad infections. This time they started me on a strong antibiotic the first week here to hopefully avoid anything very dangerous. While this phase is not fun and taxing on my body… This is good in a way… its expected and part of the process. It is what chemo does to the body. The sooner I get through it, the sooner I get to hold my baby again. So while i get nervous.. im ready to just fight hard and pull through to get out of here. Heres how it works: --Chemo wipes out all the active cells including your red and white blood cells and platelets --Doctors keep your red and platelets at low predetermined level they feel is safe.. They dont allow the red or platelets to fall below zero, IF they so drop below that safe level I get transfusions. Ive had 2 so far and expect to start getting them every other night. However, they do allow the white blood cells to do so. We want them to go to zero, we WANT to wipe out all the cells to see what grows back. --I will sit at ZERO until my body is strong enough to make new cells. Sometimes thats 10 or 15 days. Depends on how strong my body is-- --Then my bone marrow will start to make new cells-- we hope CANCER FREE CELLS-- and when my white count is safe enough to me to be out in the public and its safe for me to be at home ( 1 hour and half away from the hospital) they will send me home to recover. --When I recover I return for a bone marrow biopsy which will look at what type of cells came back-- and if the stem cells responsible for making cells are making cancerous cell. We hope and pray for FRESH HEALTHY CELLS and nothing in my stem cells. --If my marrow and my stem cells are empty of cancer I will return for another fun 30 day + round here OR if they see any sign of cancer in the results… I go straight to transplant. --So we wait… we pray for strength and fresh healthy cells to grow back so I can get back to my family and my nugget I miss so much. Thanks for the prayers, love and support.. please take the time to #ArmorUp… for whatever battle you may face. #GetFit2Fight xoxo Loriana
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 13:48:23 +0000
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