School Is Back In Session

Hello all...sorry for the delay, but dang life is busy...that's my "excuse" every time I miss the blog these days, huh?

Alright, lets all catch up to speed. Ready? Here we go.

So, as we all know, next week will hopefully be my mom's very last chemo EVER! Let's all do a collective finger crossing and send out some good ju-ju that this is true. My mom is still doing blood draws twice a week so that they can be really up to date with all of her levels. So far, they seem to all be doing fairly well, except for the Red Blood Cell Count.

Red Blood Cells are the most common type of blood cells and the vertebrate body's principal means of delivering oxygen to the body tissues via the blood. The process in which the Red Blood Cells are reproduced is called erythropoiesis. Erythrocytes are continuously being produced in the red bone marrow of large bones at a rate of 2 million per second.

Many chemo drugs temporarily stop cells from dividing, especially the cells that divide quickly. red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets are made by the bone marrow. These blood cells divide quickly. Chemo can lead to low blood counts, causing the possibility of a variety of symptoms and these are just some of them:

Myelosuppression - a decrease in the production of blood cells, which may lead to low blood count.
Pancytopenia - a lowering of all three types of blood cells; red blood cells, platelets, and white blood cells, which may lead to low red blood cell count, low blood platelet count, and/or low white blood cell count.
Anemia - a decrease in the number of red blood cells (RBC), which may lead to low red blood count.
Thrombocytopenia - a decrease in the number of platelets (PLT), which may lead to low blood platelet count.

There are a few things that you can do to help manage a low blood cell count such as resting between activities, eat an adequate amount of proteins and vitamins, and drink plenty of fluids. Dr. Paroly has also prescribed a medication called Procrit.

Procrit is a drug used to treat anemia in patients with kidney damage and in cancer patients whose lack of red blood cells results from chemotherapy and it helps build the Red Blood Cell Count. My mom will be administered these shots once a week for the next month. Hopefully these will up her Cell Count. She had her first shot last Friday and she says she can already feel the change. So, YEA for that!

It must be also aiding in her Attitude Cell Count because, whoa, watch out! She is feisty as ever, bossing me around, yelling at speeding cars and no longer listening to a word I say to her.

She has one more blood draw this week on Thursday and then the pre-chemo visit with Dr. Paroly on Friday...if all is well, she starts the LAST chemo on Monday!

Holy shit! That would be amazing! I think she is really looking forward to not only no more chemo, but no chemo during the holidays and the hair re-growth that comes along with it.

Please send out all of your magic prayers, finger crossing, beams of light, claps, and positive energy for this to be the LAST AND FINAL CHEMO!!

I do, though, feel the need to inform you that she has an ear infection...well, we think. Her right is clogged and it hurts. I have more than enough of these in my lifetime to know what the symptoms are and how bad they suck. We let the nurses, or girls as we call them, at Dr. Paroly's office know and tomorrow we are going to my mom's primary care physician to get the diagnosis. She'll be fine, but of course I will let you know the outcome.


Keep the love a'comin!!

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.

-Gloria Steinem