Monthly Archives: April 2014

Blood count very low. She’s in for the night.

So much for being stubborn.

They’ve taken her bloods, carted her off for a chest xray and now have her hooked up to some IV antibiotics (how about that for speed). They’re checking to make sure that Sam hasn’t developed something called neutrophenia. This is a condition that is caused when the number of white blood cells (called neutrophils) in the blood is low. If they get too low it can be very dangerous. Neutrophils (white blood cells) help the body to fight infection and people who are having chemotherapy are at risk of developing it. This means that if they get any kind of infection then there’s nothing to combat it. If it’s not picked up quickly then things can escalate and sometimes it can be fatal.

They’ve looked into Sam’s throat and they think she’s started to develop a throat infection (so they’re keeping an eye on that) and the chest xray is to make sure there’s no infection there too. She’s been told that if her blood count comes back too low then she’ll be spending the night here.

She gave the doctor the same look she gives me when I’ve done a bad injection. I felt his pain.

My god, it’s packed in here and it’s not just adults either. The kids room is quite busy with young children too.

As we got out of the car and even though Sam was really not feeling right (Blurry vision, high temperature, sore throat and very achey) she was still saying she didn’t want to waste anyone’s time (She can be a stubborn fool sometimes). Luckily this stubbornness didn’t last long because when you walk into A&E there’s a big sign next to the receptionist (in red) saying that if you’ve had chemo in the last 6 weeks and are feeling unwell, then you must tell them immediately as this can be dangerous. As soon as we mentioned this to them our feet didn’t touch the ground. We were sat down for around 2 minutes before Sam’s name was called (much to the annoyance of the people who have obviously been here for a long time).

It’s probably a good thing that we weren’t in the waiting room for too long because I’m far too nosey not to stare at people to try and work out what’s wrong with them (Damn you 24hrs in A&E).

It’s injection time again and this time I’ve taken advice. Seems I was doing it all wrong before by not going in at an angle (that’s why Sam always had this look like she wanted to punch me) . One unforseen problem that’s arisen from our home injections is that Rosie is starting to become fearful of them. Whenever it’s time for Sam’s jab, Rosie gets a little hysterical. Unfortunately she’s starting to associate an injection with pain. We don’t do the injections in front of her but she’s picked up on what’s happening. We changed tactic on the last 4 jabs by making sure we were always laughing and having a good time whenever we did them. It seemed to have done the trick. It also helped me out because if I gave a dodgy injection by accident and caused Sam pain, then she would have no choice but to laugh and pretend it was great instead of kicking my ass. Thanks Rosie. 😉

So, goodbye FEC, it’s been nice knowing you. Unfortunately, we’ve got to meet your evil cousin next time out. Taxotere (or Docetaxel as it’s also known) is on the agenda for the next 3 sessions (which they’ve kindly spread out over the next 9 weeks) . Now, the usual side effects that are included with this package (sickness, tiredness, diarrhoea, anemia, loss of appetite, taste change, sore mouth and bruising and bleeding) are all present and correct, but this time they come with added extras. Bonus features include numbness and tingling of the hands and feet. These are caused by the effects that Docetaxel (Taxotere) has on the nerves. Apparently It can cause you to have trouble doing up buttons and other fiddly little tasks as your hands become hard to use. If Sam gets this then she can get the doctors to lower the dosage of Docetaxel and this should help. Usually the effects will start to fade after treatment, however, sometimes they can become permanent and will never go away (thanks doc). Another added extra is dry/sore skin. Sam has been advised to moisturise like crazy when she’s being treated with Docetaxel because it will really dry out her skin and cause it to crack, go red and become very sore. Udder cream is a good moisturiser to use apparently (yes, it does exactly what it says on the tin). Another newcomer to the party is fluid retention. Sam may find that she puts on weight generally, or her legs and ankles become swollen with the build up of fluid that is caused by the chemo. If this starts to happen then she can got to the doctors and be given more steroid tablets to help combat it. Sam’s muscles and joints will start to ache quite a lot with Docetaxel. Sometimes this can get so bad that it makes it hard to do everyday tasks. Warm baths are the only things that are advised to help with this. Finally, we have the killer of fingernails and toenails. This is where Sam’s nails will become brittle and have the potential to just snap off. One piece of advice that they give is to paint your fingernails black. This is because it’s the sunlight that can cause the brittleness and cause them to snap off and sometimes the black colour will shield them. I’ve spoken to some people who have not been able to walk because their toenails have become so sore and bloody that it’s impossible to put your feet on the floor.

So, another great sales pitch for chemotherapy. I suppose it doesn’t matter what happens as long as it kicks the hell out of the cancer and gets rid of it for good. We’ll know how much of an ass kicking it’s getting on the 16th April when we have the MRI scan to measure the size of the lump. We’ll then be able to see if it’s shrunk at all. You do get the feeling though that things are going to get a lot tougher. It’s almost as if FEC has lured us into a false sense of security and now the real villain has turned up to do its thing.

So that’s it. The halfway point done. Although it seems that FEC has decided that it’s going to kick Sam’s ass this time round. She actually went to bed early tonight (she never does that), and boy, did she look like she needed it. She’s finding it hard to focus and she’s looking generally spaced out. I came upstairs to check on her about 40 minutes ago and she was sat next to the toilet looking white as a sheet. No sickness yet but I get the feeling it’s going to visit soon.

To me, parents with small children fall into two camps. There’s the one camp where the parents have worked out their night routines down to a tee and they’ve managed to plan bedtimes, train their children to sleep all night (without hearing a peep from them) and are able to get a perfect nights sleep more or less everyday. Then there’s the other camp, (which we have a gold card with), where the night routine has never ever been perfected and an uninterrupted night’s sleep does happen, it’s just once in a blue moon.

We’ve never mastered the bedtime routine with our kids. With Maddy we tried the “controlled crying” technique (too soft), the “sit in the room and move further away each night” technique (too boring) and even the “ambient background noise in bedroom” technique (too noisy), but none of those worked. In the end we just used the well known “sit with her until she goes to sleep and then wait for her to run through when she wakes up at any point in the night and then let her get into your bed” technique (so much easier). Harry arrived not long after Maddy and once again the bedtime routine for him started well. This was until the little monkey finally worked out why Maddy was always in our bed when he woke up. From that point it was a competition to see who would get into our bed first. Now, I know some people may think “Why did you let them do that?”, but to be honest it was always around 2am or 3am and as soon as they ran through and got into our bed they would just go straight back to sleep. It would’ve been a different story if they wanted to play. I suppose, as parents, you find a system that gets you the most amount of sleep and this was our system. There’s one couple I know who have a single mattress next to their bed and when their kids come through one by one during the night the dad just slips off the edge of his bed, onto the mattress and then they all go back to sleep. It never went to that extreme with us. Both Maddy and Harry eventually grew out of the habit of coming into our room and decided their own rooms were much comfier. The problem is Rosie has now developed the same run through technique, only this time it’s with added stealth. You could always hear Maddy and Harry coming a mile off, but Rosie has this unbelievable talent of not making a sound. She just glides through silently like a ninja and will get in the middle of our bed without creating a ripple. Most of the time I’ll roll over in bed and discover this little foot in my face and I’ll spend the next 5 minutes trying to work out how the hell she managed that. Charlie is still in his cot and we’ve trained him to go to sleep on his own without any bells and whistles and so far, so good. Apart from waking for his usual feed in the night he’s not too bad and anyway, you get used to the broken sleep eventually. Thing is, whenever they do have that rare night when they all sleep right through the night without a sound, we end up thinking something is wrong and will wake up to go round to check they’re all breathing ok just to be sure. We’re our own worst enemy. 😉

Pre chemo went well today. We saw the oncologist and explained to her about Sam’s skin and she looked to see if there was anything she could prescribe. Most of the tablets would muck around with her hormones so she was reluctant to prescribe any of those so in the end she’s given her some antibiotic cream that she can use instead. Hopefully this will help sort the problem out.

We’ve got an MRI scan scheduled for the 16th April where we’ll be able to see if the little git is responding to treatment and shrinking in size. One little encouraging sign is when the oncologist was examining Sam for the lump, she thought she had the wrong breast because she couldn’t feel the lump because it felt so much smaller. We won’t know the size change for certain until they do the MRI, so fingers crossed. If it has shrunk a lot and it is responding well then they may extend the FEC sessions for a while longer to give it more of a kicking.

As it is tomorrow is the last session of FEC before we move onto the T. Unfortunately, the T (taxotere) is a much stronger chemo and more of an evil bugger than FEC. It also comes with a whole different range of side effects but I’ll go into more details about that at a later date.

Let’s just concentrate on one FECker at a time shall we. 😉