Dr. Visit

We were coming upon two months of no appointments for Terry.  I guess they missed us too much and decided to invite us in on Monday.  We were looking forward to it and grateful to have it because Terry had a cold/cough/sinus issue he has been battling for about a week.  He now has an antibiotic to help him get over it (which he seems to need every time he gets a cold), so better days and nights are on the horizon.

Terry's blood work -
WBC - 3.3(L) - normal is 4.5 - 11.0
RBC - 4.41(L) - normal is 4.50 - 5.90
Platelets - 54(L) - normal is 150 - 400
Ab Neutrophils - 0.5(LL) - normal is 1.8 - 7.8 (no action taken / meaning no shot)

These next two tell us about the liver - these are good numbers for Terry
ALT - 46 - normal is 17 - 63
AST - 47(H) - normal is 15 - 41

Lymphocytes - 72(H) - normal is 21 - 49.    (This count was up from 45 in July.)

The plan at this point is that Terry will begin treatments again on the 13th of December.
He will take Revlimid (an oral med), mostly meant to target the MDS but it may help the CLL too.  He will also have an IV chemo treatment, Rituxan - this is the one we swore off of because of the reaction he had to it years ago, but has been given successfully since then, so we don't have any reservations about it for that reason anymore.  I don't remember how often he takes the pills, but the IV will be once a week for four weeks. 

This is the plan that Dr. Silva from SCCA spoke to Terry about earlier this fall.  Her thought or hope was that this would prepare him for a second transplant.  Dr. Smith seemed to think it might begin an on going, life-long treatment, but still wasn't sure about how often she was willing to give these treatments.  So, I am supposing that we will probably see how things look after the four weeks of treatments and determine what to do after that.

My concern is that these treatments often make Terry feel worse than the disease itself.  When I mentioned that to Dr. Smith she assured me that we must act now because of the Lymphocytes count (seen above).  That number tells us that the CLL is growing.

So, we add these treatments to our family life schedule with all the regular activities and Christmas shopping and decorating ...
It should feel quite normal since we have been doing this type of thing for so many years.
I suppose then, that it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!