Sent home without chemo--awwwwww!

Our apparently-hearty-but-in-actuality-not-so-hearty cowpoke got sent home from the Chemo Palace today.

He was supposed to start round two, with Methotrexate and VinBlastItAll today, but when they tried to get his blood out, it wouldn't come out. It was clotted all to smithereens. They eventually called the head of the center over to give it a try, and he could get out just enough for the lab to test it.

Turns out ole Billy is extremely low on both white cells and red cells. But especially the white cells. Thus the severe clotting.

So!

He got a shot of Neupogen today, and will get one tomorrow, and a third on Saturday. These shots make his bones hurt because they overstimulate the marrow to make it create white cells. So he got pain meds, too.

Unfortunately, he is at extremely high risk of infection while his white cells are almost non-existent, so we have to go to the ER if he gets any fever over 100.

AND they are going to have to install a "port" which is some little disc that goes under the skin of his chest and is sort of permanent. They will then always use that port to pull stuff out of him or put stuff in him, and won't have to stick him with needles, or search for veins that aren't fed up with being poked, or pull the hair off his arms when they remove the tape every time he gets anything by IV.

The only other thing that happened--and by now you know I worry too easily--is that they gave us a copy of that CT scan written report. And I'm sure it's a good report--they all agreed it was--but upon reading it, I saw that they did find two new lesions on his liver again. The radiologist who wrote the report said he thought they were probably just little fluid-filled things, not worrisome. But there's "not worrisome," and then there's "not worrisome to Beth," and never the twain shall meet.

So I plan to post really SHORT notes daily for a little while. If I miss a day, don't worry. I will just have gotten too busy.

Thank you for your love and prayers and wishes, and for checking on our boy, who, by the way, is walking around in his Packers jacket and Green Bay hat, EVERYwhere he goes, thereby making many new devout friends or lifetime enemies every few minutes.

That's our boy, who used to have a bumper sticker on his Wisconsin-plated car that read: Eat Cheese or Die.