sick :-(

Not ME -- Emily. She was FINE yesterday, running around and playing with all kinds of people (one of which was obviously incubating something...) Then she started calling us in the night with stomachaches. She spiked a fever of 103 earlier and can't keep anything down...... like tylenol or advil.

Alan's been taking care of her because I'm not supposed to be around sick people -- but it's killing me not to even look in on her or put my cool hand on her forehead. I finally was able to make myself useful running off to the drugstore to get tylenol suppositories -- only to find out that they don't carry them for kids her age.... she has to have 3-3.5 to get the right dose.

My white count on Thursday am before I had the chemo was 2.7. Normal range is 3.5-10. It tends to dip in between chemo cycles but it's supposed to come back up by the end of the 3 weeks. Mine wasn't that high to begin with (a little over 4) so that's as high as it got. I got a shot of neulasta on Friday to help bring it up more this time..... thank goodness, given Emily's illness. No idea when it should happen, though, or how well it will work. I will get another CBC next week and see.

Luckily I'm feeling fine myself, post chemo this time (???!!) because it's not about me this weekend! So aside from drugstore runs I'm doing loads of laundry, on hot, and changing my shirt every time.... trying not to catch a garden variety illness which, I'm told, could kill me while I have a low white count.

My mom is still recuperating from the cold she got from Matthew (he's better though) as is ALan. Alan seems to be more recuperated than Mom from the cold -- maybe he's well today, but for how long now (given his new role as caretaker for the sick) I have no idea. He's prone to catch things, but maybe more so when they go for his sinuses......One can hope. (Stay away from sick people, the nurse told me -- the nurse on Friday, who gave me the neulasta -- she was great, and very informative, though some of the things she recommended were impossible, like having my own bathroom....)

I don't think I ever explained here the deal with the white count. I suppose a good number of you guys know about it, but for those who don't -- basically the deal is, there isn't really a medication that targets cancer cells specifically. Chemotherapy targets all fast growing cells -- cancer cells, hair, white blood cells, sometimes red blood cells, maybe even platelets. (Did I forget anything?) Thus the side effects. Also -- that means it works better on fast growing cancers -- and less well on slow growing cancers. Which one mine is, is one of those wait-and-see things -- as is how well the chemo works. I can get a sense by checking the tumor, whose shape has definitely changed.

However, the final word on how well the chemo has worked happens after the mastectomy when they check through all the tissues that were removed. The best possible prognosis comes if everything that was removed is either non cancerous or dead cancer tissue. That happens in only 5-10% of cases, Alan tells me. I will do my best to get there, or close to it..... however the hell that works. I sure hope Cat's Claw doens't interfere with it.

That's an herb, unicaria tomentosa. It helps build immunity. My doctor thinks it's okay, but I don't think anyone has tested it on cancer cells, or looked at its interaction with chemo. (Course they probably haven't looked at pot that way either, and everyone knows about pot and chemo nausea....)