Post Number 30 (I think): first maintenance chemo

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

I was back for the first round of maintenance chemotherapy yesterday.  Before starting, they did another CBC (complete blood count) to ensure that my platelet count had improved.  It had:  from 24,000/deciliter to 31 to 54 and now, all the way up to 109,000.  The ideal is 120,000 – 150,00 (file this under trivial info you just don’t need to have!).   At 109, I was okay for the IV to be stuck in my arm.  Quick note:  at last week’s endoscopy to ensure that I had not developed an ulcer, the PA jabbed my vein so hard that the wound “leaked” for three days afterwards.  So, they switched arms this time.

Since they had to wait for the doctor’s approval after the new CBC to start, I sat there for an extra hour waiting for Doc Onc1 to return from an emergency at the hospital.  The maintenance chemo (minus the Carboplatin--Carboplatin is a slow drip) only took two hours as opposed to the normal four.  Afterwards, I received my B-12 shot and returned to work.

This morning, I was back for a Neulasta shot (not the sleeping drug with the cute little psychedelic butterfly).  I get one of those the day after each chemo treatment to charge up my white blood cells.

The maintenance chemo leads to less tiredness but continues to work against the pesky, reduced, lung cancer.  With luck it will reduce itself into total remission.  Or, I will continue on maintenance until some new breakthrough occurs.  Whatever:  I should still be around for some years to come.  That’s according to Doc Onc1 who has a few people on maintenance now for more than two years.

So, there’s a path set:  once a month for maintenance chemo and the day after for Neulasta.  As Nurse Maggie, who does all of my chemo treatments, says:  "there is no expiry date tattooed on your foot."  Good news, I think.  I mean the IV drip every month is not too bad.  I take my iPad and check email, read books or watch old movies downloaded from Netflix.  Could be worse.

And I keep reciting poems I once sang into the valley between Engineer Hill and Pleiku ("big town" in the Jarai Monragnard dialect).  "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree") and the first lines of "The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is laid out against the sky / like a patient etherized upon a table....").  Poetry has always been a great consolation as philosophy was for Abelard and others.  I remain grateful to my high school teachers who had us memorize thousands of lines.