Maintenance

Day one of maintenance started out pretty bad with Scott barfing up before we even left the house. This continued at the clinic along with a great deal of fear of having his port accessed. Scott was convinced that the piggy mucous would lead to his access procedure resembling a slasher movie.

So anyway he had his blood drawn from his finger and he had a bit of a lie down whilst we waited for the results. He was in a foul mood and so stressed he was breathing all funny. The bloodwork looked good again ...
anc -> 955
wbc -> 1.7
hgb -> 10.7
plt -> 235
good enough for chemo to start and thus port accessing.

The lovely Bob drew the short straw and did an amazing job, no flumes of blood hitting the ceiling, just a perfect access and an incredibly relieved Scott. He was given vincristine and methotrexate, but not the methotrexate of old, just a small dose to help keep the leukemia at bay and to keep counts within a certain range. If the anc gets too high he will be given a higher dose, too low and he will be given less. And no doxorubicon!! Yay for maintenance.

Due to the quite overwhelming interest in yesterdays fascinating fact - lol - today I found out for you all that vincristine (vicious and nasty pain inducing chemo) is made from violets!!!! Quite incredible that such an innocent looking flower can be a real bitch at heart.