Chemo Round 3 Day 20

Today has been a pretty good day. My temperature has been down for the most part. It got up to 100.5 or so earlier today but has stayed around 99 or less ever since. I have been able to walk and get around much better today. My achiness is 60% gone today and I feel a lot better. I am still having some trouble swallowing and talking but I am better than yesterday. This morning Dr. Malone ( ENT doctor) came in and did a scope of my nose and throat. He said it looked a little irritated in my throat but was otherwise OK. He did not see any signs of my old cancer and agreed that the previous radiation therapy sensitized my throat and the chemo triggered a repeat reaction. When my counts go down I probably get a low grade infection also. My mouth soreness is now almost completely gone and my soreness when swallowing is also much better. I still having trouble getting food to all go down at times and I have to eat slowly.

My counts today showed my hemoglobin went up slightly from 10.2 to 10.7. My platelet count actually dropped a little from 40,000 to 31,000. My white count had a big jump from 0.2 to 0.7 and my neutrophils are up to over 400!

My infectious disease doctor said I am getting better and we would wait and see how my temperature behaves as my counts come back up. Dr Lanzotti believes I can go home this week if they are able to get me off my IV antibiotics.

Teresa was able to come up today. She is pretty sore from doing all the shoveling Thursday and Friday. We were able to play Ticket to Ride today. She beat me twice! We had a good day. We also watched some TV shows we had recorded.

Tomorrow she will be up again. I plan to watch the superbowl tomorrow night. Teresa will probably go home when it starts since she is not a big football fan.

I hope you had a good day today and plan to have a good day tomorrow. I am hoping that it is in Gods plan for me to be able to go to church myself next Sunday. As always, I have to be that patient, patient.

Thanks again for your prayers and kind thoughts. May God bless you like He blesses me!

Doc