FREEFALL

Saw the oncologist today for the pre chemo appointment. She showed us a chart of Sam’s white blood cell count and it didn’t look healthy. Basically her white blood cells are in freefall and so far they’re not showing any signs of going back up. If they keep dropping then her treatment in the hospital will radically change. All of this means that tomorrow’s 4th chemo session is postponed because there’s literally no way her body would handle it.

The dosage of chemo that Sam’s been on has been pretty high and the oncologist said that her body handled the first 2 sessions pretty well. Her bone marrow carried on producing white blood cells like it should do afterwards, however, after the 3rd session it took a bit of a beating and hasn’t quite recovered yet. She’s being pumped full of grade A antibiotics every 4/6 hours and being given the injections to jump start her bone marrow again. Once the white blood cells start to rise then there’ll be no stopping them. They’ll also lower the dosage of future chemo sessions so that she doesn’t get into this situation again. I was worried that this would mean that any future treatment won’t be as effective as it was on the previous dosage, but they assured me it would be fine. They said that the tumour would react in the same way that the bone marrow does, so if that’s getting a kicking, then so will the tumour.

The results from the MRI weren’t available for this morning’s meeting so we’re none the wiser there I’m afraid. The oncologist did bring the pictures up on the screen but we all just sat and stared blankly at them (oncologist included). It just looked like a bunny rabbit to me. Hopefully there will be a full report attached to the pictures when we have another review meeting next Wednesday.

Oh yeah, had that chat with Maddy and Harry today about what they’d do if anything should happen during the night. Without the blink of an eye or any prompting from me, Maddy said she would call 999 whilst Harry would call Mummy, nanny or grandad. They said that they would also shut Rosie and Charlie in another room so they would protect them from seeing anything. They then continued to finish their breakfast without even asking why I’d asked them. It was almost like they’d already discussed it between themselves.

“Wait….. What?” Now I don’t know whether to be relieved because they both know what they’d do, or even more worried because they’ve already worked out a plan of action just in case.

I’ve really got to cut down on the kebabs.