Chemo Treatment #10 - Smooth as Silk

Everything went better than I expected today at my Round 10 chemo session. It started with dad's positive attitude that it was going to be a great day and I would have only two treatment s left after this one was over. And that's just what I needed because leading up to today I felt like I was coming down with a cold. Add to that the aforementioned water retention and veins that are becoming harder to find, and I thought I might possibly have to skip this treatment. On the upside, I had the latest pulmonary function test on Thursday and my DLCO/VA score was 90.1% of predicted value, this is up from 89.3% one month ago and that is good news. After discussing all this with Dr. Seifter there were no questions that we would proceed with this treatment...more good news. I was also happy to see my vitals were all good with my blood pressure being 110/70.

Dawn was running the chemo room today all by herself. I was the first patient and it was quiet for for the better part of the first hour. Dawn found an excellent vein (cephalic?) on the top side of my right hand, next to the thumb muscles. The three vials for my CBC were filled in no time and steroids, anti-nausea, and standard saline IV fluid were all flowing in short order. The CBC results (below) were back quickly and the WBC was still acceptable although it's the lowest we've seen yet (1300/uL). The granulocytes numbers were acceptable as well and my RBC, which continues to be almost normal. Given all that, we were a go for chemo.

CBC Round 10

The chemo treatment lasted just over 3 hours, one of the quickest yet. Dawn was awesome, working with no assistance and handling 5 additional patients while dad and I had an ongoing conversation. I was back home by 1pm and ready for a nap, quite the opposite of what's supposed to happen when one is full of steroids.

We're almost there! Two more to go.
Much love to you all.

PS
A picture from our oysterfest an birthday party at mom and dad's last week.

49th Birthday Pic