I had another night of drama with these night sweats. I think they are trying to UNHINGE me. If only I had a ‘cap’ to fire one in the butt of that ‘night sweat commander’….!

That familiar crashing headache, intense bladder pain and a larger than usual fatigue was prevalent at wake-up. I went straight for the Tramacet, along with other meds, kept to the plan of continued no coffee, no chocolate and no sugar for today. The removal of these food items were a non-negotiable from Fernie a day or two ago (to help with bladder stuff), so as his patient, I gave him the army salut and did as I’m told. Also, he is gate-keeper of the kitchen, making it rather hard to bypass him (haha!).

8am meds: same as yesterday and my Filgrastim shot was noonish (7th one). I have stopped bothering with ice to help mitigate the pain/sharpness of it as I’m so over it all.

During breakfast, the chemist arrived to do a blood draw instead of a prick as they were doing a full metabolic panel as well as blood counts. This included kidney, liver, fats, electrolytes, etc.

The hematologist and Dr. Alex came at noon to give my results. Always interesting what comes back. I’ve listed it below.

WBC: 0.3 (norm 4.5-11) – up from .12 on Wed.
RBC: 2.3 (norm 4.0-4.9) – down from 2.81 on Wed
Hemaglobin: 7.8 (norm 12-15) down from 9.4 on Wed
Platelets: 68 (norm 180-450) up from 31 on Wed

So there’s some positive in there that we can see the WBC counts and platelets are on the rise. This usually means that perhaps by tomorrow I may have a huge spike in my total white blood cell count, and thus, out of the red zone of contracting a serious infection. If the white blood cells are 4.0 or over then I am cleared to go for my FINAL infusion in the treatment, Rituximab. I will write more later what exactly this drug does and why it’s key in the whole treatment plan.

The other part to my overall health today was that my blood pressure was rather low: 80/60. Dr. Alex did it four times as the first time it was even lower than that. This explained my deep fatigue along with the low hemaglobin (well and obviously, from the whole treatment).

We don’t know what will happen next, other than the chemist coming again tomorrow morning to check my counts again.

I didn’t feel up to do anything. That is, no stretching, no reading, etc. With the significant drop in temperature the other day, I don’t recall if we even tried to leave the apartment for some air outside.

My brain is still on fire, so to speak, and having a hard time following things or remember much of what happened more than 5 seconds earlier….

Oh, I recall now, duh, important update! I did feel improved strength by the time I went to bed AND my dearest friend Lisa is arriving tomorrow from Canada to bring me back home on Tuesday. I can’t visit with her though until she has received a negative PCR arrival test here in Monterrey.

Seeing her will probably make me collapse into tears….I have no filter 😉