Back up and running

Finally, I’m back posting after a brief “lapse”. Thank you to Sara for doing the posts while I was in the hospital. I’m recovering well and ready to get back to things as usual. Thanks to so many people for your support and care throughout my hospital stay…family, friends…I appreciate everything that each and every one of you did. I’m very blessed to have family & friends like you. I was very well taken care of! After going through this, I am so amazed at what medical advances have been made…to think they can remove a gallbladder laparoscopically (using 3 small incisions and 1 larger one (in the navel)) and fill your abdomen with air to maneuver the tools around and then extract the gallbladder through the navel…well it’s just amazing. If any of you would like to see an illustration of where they insert the laparoscopes…here’s a link: http://www.doereport.com/generateexhibit.php?ID=5095&ExhibitKeywordsRaw=&TL=&A=

It’s only an illustration, but if you’re queasy about seeing medical stuff…you might want to skip it, but the medically curious may want to click on it. (I'm fairly glad I didn't see this before my surgery!)

So on to keeping you updated as to Dad’s progress. So I left off on the last of 3 days of chemo week before last…that was a Thursday. On Friday morning (with me in the hospital) Dad had to go to the oncologist’s to get his Neulasta shot that they always give 24 hours after each treatment. After a round of chemo, the white blood cell count usually takes quite a dip, which in turn, lessens a person’s immunity. By getting a Neulasta shot, this helps produce white blood cells. More technically, Neulasta binds to stem cells (located primarily in the bone marrow) and stimulates the production of neutrophils, a certain type of white blood cells. Apologies for getting so technical, but I think it helps understand what Dad is going through.

So the Neulasta shot takes about a week to the day to take effect…to start producing the white blood cells and this can cause aching in the larger bones (legs, hips, back) as these cells are being produced. So on Thursday of last week, Dad experienced some severe pain that he just had to weather through at work and into the evening. It overlapped into Friday, also, so I had him take a heating pad to wrap around his hips and back because that seemed to help a bit. By Saturday he was fine and back to usual. He says that because he could feel it, it must be doing the job.

On his last trip for blood work last Tuesday, his white blood cell count was way down (the shot had not had time to do its thing). His next visit to the doctor for blood work is tomorrow and I will let you know what the results are of that.

From then…he has another check up visit to his oncologist on Monday (Jan. 24)…a week from today….and then another round of chemo Tues, Wed. Thurs. of that week…identical to the last round.