Chemo rides again

Yesterday was... different when it came to my hospital visit. Scheduled at 11:30 to see the doctor we got there about the right time and sat down to wait. We had a follow-up visit with the doctor who is giving me the platelet stimulator after my oncologist so it was looking like it was going to be a most of the afternoon at the hospital type thing. (The usual)

The nurse for the blood doctor saw us waiting and said that since Dr. Ludwig was running behind that they could take me in before he could get to me. Wow, great, so in I went and got poked and prodded and answered questions. Then the blood doctor came in and asked some more questions and while she was asking them Dr. Ludwig poked his head in and instead of leaving he came in and talked with me, and also made plans with the blood doctor for follow treatment for this round and platelets. Then it was hand shakes all around and we were out. The whole thing only took about an hour and a half... to see TWO specialist doctors at MDA. Efficiency, who knew?

The doctor delivered some news that I considered mostly good, which, honestly, is the first time in a while I feel like I've gotten something good from an oncologist.

First, the shots I had been getting for platelets have been working. He was really excited about this. It turns out I was much more of a "guinea pig" with this drug than I had previously thought. Turns out there wasn't a lot of stock of the drug, Neumega, around the MDA complex because no one was using it much. It sounds like Ludwig was impressed enough with the results that he is going to be sending more and more patients that way.

Second, the scan from Tuesday showed mostly stable tumors, with one of the larger masses having actually reduced in metabolic activity. Which is great to hear as I have been off chemo for so long. I was kind of expecting to hear about a lot of growth, this was not the case. While it's no where close to all gone, my body also isn't completely riddled with it either. Good news I would say. God is at work in my body!

Third, I started chemo today. They said yesterday that they would call me and let me know when the appointment was, which, of course, never happened. Last night after we had dinner with some friends (amazing!) I looked it up online to find, much to my surprise, that chemo was to start at 8AM. All my other chemos have been at 3 or 4, which I expected this one to be as well, so I was a little shocked to learn that we needed to be leaving the apartment at bright and early o'clock. All my other chemos have been booked at about the same time this week. After this first one however it is nice to get home before three in the afternoon (while it is still light) as opposed to before eleven at night.

In the townhouse news we just got a report that the home inspection went really well and they are only requesting one thing, which made sense to us, so we're going with it. Looks like we're cruising towards the June 1st closing date! Thanks for the prayers about this!

I am shaky from this first round of chemo (being off of it for so long really hits me hard the first time) so I am going to stop typing now. Thanks so much for the continued prayers and support. I'll continue to keep you all informed how it is going!


~B.
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