Neutropenia

Well here I am a week later and no further forward. After three unsuccessful attempts I'm now waiting to hear from Ward One for a new date to begin the fourth cycle of my chemo treatment which should have started two weeks ago. The problem continues to be my low white blood cell count and especially my neutrophils which need to be above 1.5 before they will treat me. They've been as high as 1.49 but I still couldn't be treated. The next test, at the hospital, went down to 1.44, so treatment was out of the question.

That was on Friday and even had my count been above 1.5 they probably would not have treated me as I've had other complications which put them off going ahead with the chemo. I won't bore you with the details. Apparently I'm at risk of developing neutropenia, which according to Wikipedia could become life-threatening and deadly. Which is definitely not nice but explains why they have to be so careful about giving me more chemo.

The nurse took my temperature in one ear and said that's a bit low, lets try the other ear. Which turned out to be normal. So my head has two different temperatures, the right side is low and the left side is normal. No wonder I'm so unbalanced.

It's a beautiful sunny day here in Edinburgh. I think I shall venture out, not having been able to go very far in the past few days, maybe a bash at a Princes Street is called for, see how long I can last and who knows might even catch sight of a tram or something even more exciting.

They told me the chemo might cause mood swings and loss of concentration and even memory loss. I think I'm now experiencing all of these symptoms, especially mood swings. I never know what my mood is going to be from one hour to the next which makes writing my blog difficult as I don't like to write when my mood is down. In any case if I lose concentration it becomes almost impossible to write at all. Must try to do better. My reading is all over the place. I think I'm working on about ten books right now. And that's just one too many.

If you've emailed or texted me in the past week and I've not replied its nothing personal. Please accept my apologies and will try to do better this week. All for now.