Lissa’s week 3 appointment was today, and went just fine.
The actual treatment and blood drawing for their tests takes about five minutes. They prep her port site, stick a needle in, draw blood, and give her a shot of chemo: In, Out and Done. (The port is a surgically implanted IV access thingamagig under the skin next to her left collar bone, I put numbing cream on it about an hour before I bring her in so that all she feels when the needle goes in is a little pressure.)
There’s a lot of waiting that happens before and afterwards, though. Five minutes of treatment means more than two hours of actual visit. Waiting for the room to be available, waiting for the medicine to get sent up, waiting for the blood tests to get back from the lab, waiting for the doctor to come in and do his check up…
Waiting for the doctor was particularly worth it, this time though. “I think I get to tell you the good news,” he said, grinning broadly. “Did you hear about her bone marrow from last week?”
Well, you said earlier that if her “bad cell” count was below five, we wouldn’t have to do another bone marrow this week,” I responded, “and since they told me she didn’t need one this week, I figured it must be below five.”
“It was below one. Almost entirely clean!”
Yay!
And her hemoglobin, platelets and white blood cell counts for this week were all good too. 🙂
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