Bad news: In order to have chemotherapy, you need to take a blood test two days prior to treatment to test for various things, not least of which is your white blood cell count. When I had my TCF treatment, they knew that I would possibly become neutropenic, and accordingly put me on 10 days of Neupogen to boost my counts. It works extremely well. However, on FOLFIRI, I was never put on Neupogen after treatment. What they expected was that since the treatment is much less adverse and that I am still relatively young (I think I have white hairs because of chemo, and not age) that I would not need any Neupogen. It's a pretty expensive drug, after all. I was originally supposed to have my second treatment on Wednesday, March 5 nearly a week ago. I failed the test (they don't like it when I put it that way, but it IS a failure), and had to push back treatment by one week.
And today, I learned that I failed the white blood cell test again. This means that treatment will be delayed by at least a week, probably happening on March 20. I am not happy about having treatment on a Thursday, but them's the breaks. Basically, the doctor made the wrong call in my treatment, and this is the result. My PET scan will need to be pushed back, and I may have to do a seventh treatment to make up for the month that I didn't have any. This also screws up my plans for summer school, sports, travel and pretty much anything I wanted to do in the spring.
Good news: I can now pretty much guarantee that I will make it out for Sunday with no problems whatsoever. For those that do not know, my tradition is to get to Hurley's at 9 am the day of the parade, eat the breakfast provided, drink the Irish coffee included, drink a couple of pints, go to the parade at noon and hang out on the south side of Crescent and Ste-Catherine (drinking), then go to some other bar or two and drink until around 7:30 pm. Of course I am not alone; I am with some core people, and I always either make new friends for the day, or encounter old ones. If you are interested, please let me know and we can make room for you at our table.
Make room for me, please! :)
Not sure 'bout the brekkie, but will try to tag along for the latter drinking portion of the program...
omigod. moi, aussi...can we start, like, now?
:D St. Paddy's is NOT the same without you, I was thinking of skipping out, actually. Defifuckingnately reserve me a space. I'm in for brekkie, too.
Sweet. I will forward details through email.