Chemotherapy

So to continue on with my experiences, which I promise will be wrapping up very shortly, the oncologist decided that something had to be done after nearly dying a couple of times due to my low hemoglobin. My excessively high bilirubin levels in my liver was scary as well. With my spleen gone there was a load on my liver more than before. The hope was that whatever was killing my good blood cells could be extinguished by some chemotherapy.

Every third week starting off first in Kitchener for about 3 hours I would get 4 different IVs injecting the chemo. Intermittently  I would still have the blood transfusions while all this was going on. The doctors gave me pills to take if I was beginning to feel sick. The first night I took one but I realized I just needed to go to the bathroom. I never took one after that night. In fact I would be going to the local hospital after the first treatment. Then just drive home myself and continue on with my day.

One of the doses did cause me to have awful constipation so after that one time I made sure to take the suggested tablet so that I could do my business in comfort. Once I did that it was no problem. The other side effect was I lost my hair but it soon grew back once it was over.

The chemotherapy sessions ended and I can remember the day I stopped getting blood transfusions. It was March 7th of 2019. Each week I went for bloodwork the hemoglobin was holding steady. My white blood cells were low but other than that having no transfusions was great.

Another reason they were low was I was taking an immunosuppressant called cyclosporine which suppresses your immune system which was giving out these rogue Killer T-cells that was attacking my good cells as well as bad cells. So even though it may have been helping hemoglobin I was prone to getting sick. Lo and behold that September I caught pneumonia. My hemoglobin dropped shortly thereafter and I was back to getting blood transfusions again. So rather than continue on the cyclosporine I backed off and just concentrated on taking the iron chelation dissolvable tablets to try to get my iron down.

After the pneumonia bout I stayed away from blood transfusions. My hemoglobin high water mark was 110. My family doctor gave me some optimism by saying sometimes it takes a while for everything to work properly but give it some time. It appears whatever you had the chemo got it all.

My oncologist was less optimistic as she stated that she would not be surprised if there was still some T-cells that were still hanging around. Naturally I felt pretty optimistic as things seemed to be heading in the right direction.

I  passed an incident free winter but noticed my hemoglobin started slipping slowly as the months turned into Spring. Then the end of April arrived and the transfusions started again. I check my blood weekly but when I get the transfusion I check it again the following week. Well here we go again I thought. My family doctor now was less optimistic saying instead of heading in the right direction now she was just hoping that my hemoglobin would just hold steady in the 70's. That would mean transfusions all the time.

Tomorrow I will finish up this saga and then we can talk about something else. Enjoy the heat and Happy 4th of July to our neighbours down South.