No Treatment, Just Counts

We’re getting near the end of the treatment now and between the May 4th treatment and the final one, there are just checkup visits. However, as has been the case, Tim’s platelet count was low at the one week out checkup. The oncologist wanted to transfuse some platelets even though Tim had already gone through the low platelet symptom of a bloody nose earlier in the week.

We explored a little more about platelets and the fact that they don’t seem to “stick” with Tim and raise his platelet count the 60 thousand or so that it should. When he’s been in the hospital with a fever and also getting platelets, it seemed his platelet count would only go up a few. So this time, he was scheduled to come back to the clinic on Monday for counts again and his platelets had only gone up from 15 to 87. But I think his bone marrow was already going to do that. So we asked and found out that some patients just burn up the donor platelets pretty quick. We observed Tim’s temperature during the transfusion and sure enough his temperature shot up but then went down. Seems like getting platelets doesn’t help Tim a whole lot.

Tim’s white count was close to zero at that one week checkup as well. So he needed to be careful through the weekend. But by that Monday’s blood count, the white count had really recovered. The Neulasta has this effect of overshooting neutrophils so this was expected. His count dropped again at the end of week two but is still OK.

A change for the better was that Tim did not have a hospitalization after round 13 for fever. That extra week in-between round 12 and 13 really helped I think. It looked tricky for a while when he was getting platelets but his elevated temperature didn’t persist.

With the warmer sunny weather the topic of being outdoors in the sunshine came up. While on chemotherapy Tim is much more sensitive to the sun’s rays but once chemo is over he shouldn’t be any more sensitive than anyone else. However, since he has also had radiation treatment, that area will always require sunscreen and monitoring. His radiation treatment area is one that is exposed so extra caution with hats and sunscreen will need to be taken. At least until his hair begins to grow back.