Lasts

Good Morning All:

My neutropenic bones are back on the steroids as of yesterday and so the energy levels are spiking!

I wanted to give a quick update that all continues to go well. My counts are pretty low across the board (white blood cells, red blood cells, platelets, neutrophils--makes you wonder what I do have in my veins) and tomorrow is shaping up to be a long transfusion day--somewhere on the order of 7 or 8 hours to get red blood cells and platelets.

I wanted to share with you one of the recent joys as I finish my last A-cycle of treatment and move into the final B-cycle and cycle number 8 of 8. It is realizing that I have finished or will be finishing some of the more unpleasant parts of the process. For example, yesterday I had my last dose of Vincristine, a particularly nasty chemotherapy drug whose more sinister side effects is to cause feeling loss in my finger tips. For a time this feeling loss had extended to the first knuckles of each each finger. I still have baseline numbness in the tips themselves. There was always a chance that the nerve damage caused by this drug could be permanent but the fact that mine seems to ebb-and-flow based on the proximity to the treatment of the drugs seems to point that I should recover the feeling. Good thing, Audrey gets frustrated with how long it takes me to button the backs of her dresses.

Despite the energy boosts I get from these steroids, it also naturally causes sleeplessness. I get up in the morning with lots of ideas and the energy to act on them but you should see me crash around 9:00. This is my last 4-day dosing cycle of these steroids--I will take great joy in throwing away my empty pill bottle on Thursday afternoon.

These are the most recent 'lasts' that I can point to. I'll be making mention of them as they occur so you can all share in the satisfaction of these successes even if it might not mean quite as much to you as the larger milestones achieved so far.

--Russ.