Cold Turkey

Hey all-

'Cold Turkey'? What's this, a post about Christmas dinner leftovers? Nah, we finished most of those by New Years. It's more in reference to the 'temperature's rising, fever is high' first line of the song, which is pretty much what happened to me within 48 hours of my last post of how everything was going oh so well.

Now the one thing that these doctors and staff will tell you is to watch out for infection. In fact, I think they want you to worry about that more than the cancer itself. So fevers? Bad, generally speaking. Dr. Stan's rule of thumb warning from the beginning has been that if my temperature got to 100.5, I'd be heading off to the hospital to get hooked up to an IV of antibiotics. So when I was sort of sluggish and out of it on New Year's Eve (not even making it to midnight for the first time in probably 37 years), then woke up with a low fever on New Year's Day, it was not the best way to start 2009.

It was a fairly low fever, usually below 100, but sometimes getting down to normal levels. We checked with the doctor 'on call' for the holiday, and got pretty much the same mantra: nothing to really worry about, give us a call if it gets to 100.5. Friday the fever hung in there, and after calling the office we found that this week's Leukine shots (for boosting the white blood cells) often have the side effect of a low grade fever. Would have been nice to know that in advance! On the other hand, I have had these shots before, and don't seem to have had the fever before. We'll ask more about that Monday. At any rate, Friday was the last of the shots, and Saturday night saw the last of the fever. I can take the fever or the indigestion or the numbness in the fingers, as long as I know it's to be expected or a possibility.

LATER....

The fifth chemo session was Monday; my temperature was 97 degrees, and everything went as fine as it could go. I'm usually pretty alert until they put a shot of Benedryl in the IV, then I'm out for a while. Went home and slept a lot afterwards, but no new fever. We've got more Leukine shots this week, but won't be starting them until Thursday, probably because my white blood cells were up to 6.7 over last week's 2.1. The chemo will knock it back down over the course of the week, so starting a little later makes sense. It'll be interesting to see if the fever comes back when the shots commence. In the meantime, there's the anti-nausea pills (Emend), and the Prednisone and all of its less-than-stellar side effects for 5 days. Bleah. No need to go into details, but it really makes you appreciate the time when you're NOT taking it.

I mentioned numbness earlier on: I started to experience some of that in my fingertips a couple of weeks ago and mentioned it at the next checkup. Dr. Stan says it's not an unusual side effect of one of the drugs in my chemo treatment (Oncovin aka Vincristine). You can look it up in Wikipedia to read about all of the side effects, but the only thing I'm getting so far is a little numbness and weakness in my left hand. To prevent further complications, the Oncovin was not included in Monday's chemo and will be left out for the last one as well, and I'm taking a B complex vitamin daily to correct the problem. It's more of an occasional nuisance than a real problem; it doesn't effect my typing, but it makes using the touchpad unusual sometimes.

But in spite of this new bump in the road all is well, the lines on the graphs are still going the right way, and we're five down, one to go!

Alleluia!