Sunday, March 15, 2009

Seven more days of chemo behind us!

Monday started out pretty good as we met with the doctor and learned that Terry's blood work shows that he is improving quite nicely. We were encouraged. We also learned that this could mean that with this improvement he may not have the stem cell transplant as soon as we had suspected.
Now that I have said that, I must also say this - we learn something one day and then in a few weeks or months, things change, so we don't really know much at all right now, except that his blood work is good.
To have the stem cell one must "fail" Rituxan (which Terry did on the previous treatments) and also "fail" Fludarabine (or Fludara). Well, he is having the Flurdara treatments right now and is not yet failing them - it's actually helping quite nicely at the moment.
The trick is in what we don't know - of course! He has just finished the 4th out of 6 rounds of this Fludara. (Everyday for 5 days and then 3 weeks off, for 6 rounds.)
If I understand it correctly this is what I know - If he does well for six months or more after the last week of treatments he will not have the stem cell transplant yet. If he gets progressively worse within the first 6 months after his last week of Fludara treatments then that means he will have "failed" Fludara.
So we continue to feel good about the progress, but we still don't know what the future holds, but we are becoming quite used to that.
Monday's excitement soon lessened as we went in for the chemo treatment after seeing the doctor. Each Monday of the week of treatments they put a new midline in his arm. Well, after trying awhile, she couldn't get it in the left arm and pulled it out. It was a bit stressful for Terry's body and he became light headed and fatigued. After a few minutes of resting with his feet up and a cloth over his forehead he was "attacked" again, this time in the right arm, and again she could not get it in and ended up having to put a line in his wrist.
Good news is - he was able to leave this line in for five days because it looked so good still on Wednesday, but usually they have to replace that type of line after three days.
All in all we are feeling good about things!

1 comment:

Jason and Kristi Ann said...

Thank you for the update. We pray for Uncle Terry every night, even multiple times a day. My husband's cousin is a survivor of this type of cancer so there is always hope! We love you! As for the needles...maybe they should get an expert in there next time! :) (It probably was an expert-Just kidding.)