Low counts

Before the second chemo treatment can start, Charl has to do blood work to see how his blood cells are faring. You may remember that Charl came out of his 7-14 day period with (what we considered at the time) flying colours, because he hadn't gotten sick or picked up on an infection. But today we were shown his blood work results, and in fact his neutrophils and white blood cell counts didn't recover after that 14th day. They are both very low; the neutrophils barely above zero.

They say that a patient's physical response to the first treatment is generally indicative of their response for the proceeding treatments, and if so, we can expect Charl to do very well during the next 5 rounds. However, what we didn't expect was to have to be even more diligent about protecting him from infection beyond that 7-14 day window.

There are two ways a low blood count is managed: one is by waiting until his body naturally builds the count up again, but that would mean missing his scheduled chemo treatment. They did not advise this approach. The alternative, then, is to take a Filgrastim injection the day before chemo. Filgrastim stimulates the blood system (bone marrow) to make white blood cells, so that he has enough to be able to tolerate the harsh chemicals in chemo therapy.

Charl was prescribed three doses: one injection for today, and two preceeding round 3. These have to be injected at home, so it was up to me or Charl to play nurse. I immediately opted out given my pathetic intolerance to all things needle. So my brave husband stepped up to the plate, learned to fill his own syringe, do the 'mad doctor' tap-tap to remove air bubbles, clean and pinch a fat roll in his belly (sorry honey, I had to say that), and inject the magic potion. And voila! his blood count is on its way up for tomorrow's treatment.

We are now ready for round 2 tomorrow!