Wait

Pretty good energy this morning. Walked around the neighborhood for an hour with Gabrielle, circling around not too far from home just in case. The walk wiped me out, so I took a 2.5-hour nap.

Both Dr. A and the nurses stressed not to stop physical activity. If an infection happens in the next few weeks I'll need to be in the best possible shape to get through it. But the crushing waves of fatigue are real, for one thing. For another, even if my hemoglobin weren't so far down, I just can't imagine doing heavy aerobic exercise with a catheter dangling in the vena cava right outside my heart (see PICC line). Even gentle yoga poses have gotten difficult; I can't warm up my muscles enough to loosen them for stretching (low hemoglobin effect). After the nap I tried taking another walk, but had to head back after 10 minutes.

Reached the chemo halfway point this morning. The pump control panel says it's pushed 105 ml of my total 210 ml of 2-CdA. Monday evening, 7 PM, they'll disconnect me and take another blood test. I'm contemplating going over for the blood draw separately, in early afternoon, so I can get the test results when I go back for the disconnect.

After that it's just waiting. Guarding against infection, and waiting some more. Around week 2 they'll put me on a prophylactic antibiotic to prevent pneumonia. And then I'll wait some more. Yesterday I found a description of the 2-CdA clinical trial results on RxList.

In the trials, half of all patients achieved normal white counts — ANC of 1.5 or higher — within 5 weeks from Day 1 of treatment. Normal's great, and of course I want to get there, but I've been functioning for weeks, maybe months, infection-free on a count of 0.6-0.7. So if my count comes up even to 1.0, I'll stop worrying about it much. Platelets come back even faster, within 2 weeks. (And a good thing too. I remember noticing back in Amsterdam, last summer, that shaving cuts kept bleeding for an amazingly long time; now I know why.) Hemoglobin takes a bit longer — 8 weeks. That's the one I really can't wait to see. I think a lot of my noticeable symptoms — fatigue, muscle tightness and soreness, cramps, general weakness — come from this.

But maybe I won't be in the early half of the statistical spread. Maybe age, good physical condition, etc. plays in my favor on this. Maybe not.

That's all I have energy for today. Tomorrow I want to write about the question that's been nagging at me: why?