My Journey 10/7/10

Yesterdays daily conversation with my doctor helped me understand some inner working of the human body and help quell a little anxiety that I was having due to a fluctuating blood counts.  Tuesday we saw a n increase in my ANC count (neutropenic count) to 20.  Its a small number, but was excited to see it go up.  I was like sweet!  Its working.  My counts came back on wednesday showing a 0.  Despondent is a good word, and throw a restless night sleep in there...  Thursdays Numbers cam back and there was a there was a two fold increase in the numbers all around.  I asked Mark my doctor.  What dies this mean?  Is this normal?  Cause this roller coaster sucks!  He said yes and that this is a good sign.  What happens is the new stem=cells are doing what there suppose to do.  They are starting to make new cells.  The new cells get released into the blood stream and are getting taken up my the organs and tissue to start repairing it from all the chemo, bruising and even any bugs that go on while your bottomed out.  Thats the reason for the roller coaster.  Mark explained that while Erika, Nic Drago and Jackie Nelson were visiting.  Of course, Drago had to Facebook it immediately!  Hahahahaha...  It was good for Erika to hear it from the horses mouth.  For me, it was a sigh of relief and now understand my body a little bit better on how it works.

At this point its a waiting game.  My counts are slowly moving up.  Hopefully hit overdrive in the next couple days.  Once my counts go above 1000, I wont be considered neutropenic and may be released to a halfway house a few blocks from the hospital.  Going to guess next week some time.  Ill throw out a guess, the 14th.   Thats a week from today.  I feel really optimistic!