Yesterday I met w/my radiation oncologist, Dr. M. As I've mentioned, I meet w/him every monday so he can evaluate my progress and answer any questions I have - and I had a bunch of questions this week. One of the major concerns w/the combined radiation and chemo treatments is your white blood cell count - mine is currently at 3500 which is lower than normal but still in a reasonable range (normal white blood cell count is anywhere from 4500 to 8000; recall mine was at 5400 when they let me out of the hospital 6 weeks back) and, more importantly, it's been holding steady (in fact, slowly increasing). The cutoff for treatment is 2000 at which point they stop treatment temporarily and work on increasing the counts - this is not uncommon but I really don't want any delays. My weight has also been pretty stable over the last couple of weeks which is also good. They make very precise measurements when setting you up for radiation treatments to ensure that the radiation is focused exactly on the affected areas - if you're weight changes by a significant amount (+ or - 15 lbs) it can invalidate those measurements at which point they have to recalibrate everything. Today I found out that I don't get treatment on Thanksgiving and I was disappointed because it extends my treatment time an extra day. I have to have a total of 27 treatments and, as of today, I've had 12. They will do an evaluation a couple of weeks after radiation treatments have finished. Radiation continues to work even after the treatment stops because the radiation damages the cancer cells and they die off over time (cancer cells, unlike normal cells, do not have the ability to repair themselves) so they wait before doing the evaluation so they can see the full effect of the treatment.
Overall, I'm doing okay so far this week but still feeling a little queazy and fatigued. Not sure if it's radiation or the remnants of the cold I had this weekend but I've been taking it easy. Dropped in to see the master barber yesterday and my head is nice and shiny once again. Looking forward to seeing Urinetown this weekend (no 'ur in town' cracks from theatre members please).
cheers all,
--Dr. D
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
What day are u-in-town for urinetown? I heard from Joy tickets should be snapped up now, as they are selling quickly. Think I'll check it out too.
dave
Hey Dave - I'll be there Saturday (with a special guest appearance by Min). Hope to see you.
--Dr. D
I hope you find something more fun to do on Thanksgiving anyway - and besides, you need to eat and keep your weight up!
Hope your white blood cells stay in a good range-maybe the count will increase this week since you are not having chemo.
Talk to you tomorrow evening.
M
M - while Thanksgiving's likely to be pretty quiet, just having Thursday off from work w/the combined chemo and radiation will be holiday enough :).
Post a Comment