Problems with Platelets

We Never Know What the Little Buggers Are doing, Do We?

It’s been a bit cool in San Antonio lately but the medical profession soldiers on and takes those of us in their grasp with them.  Don’t get me wrong:  that’s a good thing.  I spent last Friday being poked and prodded and mechanically moved into the core of various machines.  Here’s the schedule:
 
   PettScan at South Texas Radiology (STRIC) on Sonterra Blvd.  8 a.m.
   Blood draw (CBC) at the START Center for Cancer (this was a result of my previous encounter with 

             Stone Oak Methodist after my low platelet incident.  9 a.m.  [CBC=complete blood count] 
         MRI at STRIC on Hardy Oak.  12 noon.

At least STRIC provides donut holes since so many of us have to fast prior to going into the bellies of their machines.

The Thursday before, I had an appointment with my PCP for my routine, annual physical.  Everything looked fine:  A1C (3-month blood sugar test), normal; cholesterol, normal; triglycerides normal.  I am, in terms of a general physical in extraordinarily good health.  But there is that tiny little problem of being a Stage 4 Cancer Patient.

I wait for the results of the blood draw on Friday.  My platelet count has gone all the way up from 24 to 27 (24,000/deciliter to 27,000/deciliter).  It should be at about 120,000/deciliter (120).  The carboplatin, which I no longer take has decimated my poor little platelets.  There is talk of transfusing me, but Doc Onc1 says wait until we draw blood again on Tuesday.  Tuesday’s blood draw shows that my platelet count has risen again—this time to 31.  I am on the mend again!

That afternoon, I have my meeting with the oncologist (AKA, Doc Onc1).  Some good news.  The cancer in the brain has gone; nothing left but some scar tissue.  And more good news:  the lung and lymph node cancers have shrunk markedly.  I am now ready for maintenance.  Maintenance means that I am now having only two chemotherapy drips every three weeks instead of three every four weeks.  The bad boy, though, was the carboplatin, which I will no longer take.  That means my bad days will be reduced dramatically, possibly to none.

But, and there’s always a “but,” isn’t there?  I could not start the new maintenance regimen yesterday because of that little jaunt to the hospital and the low platelet count.  Doc Onc1 wants to find out why there was blood in my stool (gross!) on Saturday morning.  It could be, he opines, an ulcer developing.  It could be something else.  We need to find out.  We know that it is not caused by cancer, but it could be caused by the cancer treatments.

To make an already too-long story as short as possible, tomorrow at noon I go fasting to see my gastroenterologist.  Not, thank God!, for a colonoscopy, but for an endoscopy to look at the upper GI tract.  My colonoscopy doctor is a good guy who buys all of my books (punishment for putting me through all those colonoscopies! (I have one every three years because my mom died of colon cancer at 85.)

So, I’ll be at the San Antonio Gastroenterology Center tomorrow and next week will begin maintenance therapies for the remaining cancers.  If you have read this far, I can tell you that Doc Onc1 thinks I’ll be on “maintenance” for at least a year and that my outlook remains incredibly positive.