Blood results, stats geekery, aftermath.

Monday’s blood results weren’t as bright as I’d hoped: wbc at 1.7, rbc at 6.0, meaning office visit for this week is definetely out of the picture, and so is most of anything. I’m not saying I’m not disappointed, but then, this is the learning bit for me: I’ve never been good at patience games. Discpline games (like a treatment), yes. Patience, no.

Anyway, I did a bit of a calculation, this is why it’s good to have all blood results at file, so you can do calculations. Left alone (so not bombed by chemo), my body seems to generate about 0.3 units of rbc per week. Considering a conservative growth pattern (so not assuming that rbc generation speeds up as time goes on), this means it’ll take around 8-9 weeks until my red blood count gets back to normal territory (8.5 is the bottom of the normal range). I can’t do the same calculation for wbc as my wbc has always been assisted by G-CSF, but safe to assume it’ll take a similar amount of time for it to go back to normal, too.

With that, I spent most of my yesterday sleeping, and generally feeling like shit. (Like shit that’s also sleepy.) That seems to be gone now (walking a short 3.6 km helped big time), but I’m still anaemic. Also, this is still a 3rd week, so what do I expect other than regular 3rd week stuff, right?

Last but not least, an inventory of residual side effects:

  • Anaemia: as above, this will probably take 2-3 months to go away.
  • Neuropathy (reduced sensation in my fingers): I still have it, healing time in the range of “weeks, months”, according to the doc.
  • Arms and veins: they hurt a bit, time to time, I guess the IV doesn’t just go away that quickly. Not a major annoyance though.Hair: stil doesn’t grow, not that I’m bothered… Will start growing in “weeks, months”, I guess.
  • Eyebrows, eyelashes: they need to grow back. I have 1 (ONE) eyelash that is still around. Hang in there, little hero hair!
  • My face (through which I am detoxing at the moment and it looks like Mickey Rourke’s): this is an interesting one, so far Prednisolon was the answer — I wonder how long it’ll take without my ‘roids.

This is more or less it. I was thinking about drawing a diagram and a Plan-on-a-Page (I’m a PM or what), but… meh, instead let’s go to the playground with the kids!

C06d14: Fear and Loathing in Enkhuizen!

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From the looks of it (although I don’t have my blood results from today yet, so no way to tell), I OD’d GCSF a bit again. Yesterday morning I had to resort to my last resort Oxycodon to counter the bone pain… But it was nowhere near That Saturday.

Anyway, the day turned out to be one of those “random perfection” days, despite how it started. We decided to have me rest (ie. no walking or cycing), and to do this, we drove up to Enkhuizen (well, with me drugged, Juli did all the driving of course) – a city I literally picked on Google Maps simply because the Houtribdijk starts there and it’s relatively close to Amsterdam by car. I then found out it is a fairly old and significant city too — even better, I thought. And there is “some sort of museum” there too, so we can go in there, or we can just walk in the city a bit and find some food with the kids, and call it a day.

By sheer luck, we took a “wrong” turn and ended up in the parking lot of the “some sort of museum”: the Zuiderzee Museum, and once there, decided to take a look. 45 bucks for the whole family, small building, we were absolutely without a clueon what we were getting into… and it’s perfection! I highly recommend it to anyone with a family. Boat trip from the “small building” to what is practically an old Dutch fishing village, with all sorts of old crafts, clothes, toys, food… Perfect for both kids and adults.

Long story short, we didn’t go to Ekhuizen, spent the whole day in the Museum, my bone pain got much better, and the day, combined with perfect Dutch weather (that is: some rain showers, some wind, but a lot of sunshine), turned out to I think the best day trip I’ve ever had with the family. What a way to finish a second week in the cycle!

Some photos below (and some on Instagram, of course) – enjoy!

C06d08: the last IV.

last #chemo iv finished! feeling grateful to all the wonderful staff at @vumcamsterdam, thanks for all!

A photo posted by Gergo Lippai (@lipilee) on


 

Finished with the IV part of my chemo today. Some GCSF, Prednisolone, and whatnot are still tbd, but I that aside what this means is I’ve finished my chemo.

David Chase couldn’t have written my last IV day better. The bed I got today was the very same I was at on my first day, about 12 kilos and a lot of knowledge lighter. There was a delay in me getting my IV coctail from the internal pharmacy, so I was the last patient to finish, standing there and having a chance to say goodbye to the deserted Dagbehandeling… and I met all nurses at the elevator, leaving for home after a hard day’s work, it was all like a Sopranos season finale. Weather outside is rainy and warm, giving these past month a nice and mellow closing.

And now… (What now?)

One more to go!

I have one more IV to go! Funny how I said I can do this cycle in whichever way, nausea, whatever, I don’t care anymore… In return on Monday I had nausea. So I decided this is not that funny and went back to discpline and decided I don’t want to do the cycle in whichever way, I want to do it my way… so the nausea went away by Tuesday. The control one has over one’s body eh?

Also, I hit the 87 kg mark. Granted, 3 of these 87 are water (prednisolon builds up the water supplies very quickly), but still, a “clean” 84 kg is not bad!

Last round calling.