Day +59

I am fine today. Let me continue my story…

The 7+3 chemotherapy ends on 6 December, 2005. During this period, my right arm swelled heavily due to blood clot in the arm (thrombosis). I was unable to bend my hand thus unable to rise from the bed without assistance. Most of the time I was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling :-(

The time passed very slowly. Seeing through the windows, I could see the morning sky, then bright noon sun followed by red evening sky, and finally starry sky. It rained quite often in the afternoon. The nurses came to draw blood sample, to administer drug, to check blood pressure and temperature regularly. The doctors came to see me one or twice a day. Everyday was the same :-(

Apart from the chemo drug, I was infused with normal saline continuously and two types of intravenous antibiotics at regular interval. Blood counts are monitored everyday, and the red blood and platelet were transfused when necessary.

The patient was not discharged immediately after the 7 days chemotherapy. This is because the chemo drugs destroy both the cancerous and healthy cells. So the red blood, platelet and white blood counts will drop greatly after chemotherapy. The patient can be discharged only after the blood counts pick up to an acceptable level again.

As we all know, the red blood cells carry oxygen from the lung to body organs, the platelet is responsible for blood clot and the white blood cells defend the body against infection. Therefore, lacking of red blood cells (anemia) will results in fatigue, lacking of platelet (thrombopenia) results in easy bleeding and lacking of white blood cell (neutropenia) results in easy infection. When the red blood and platelet drop too much, they can be replenished with red blood and platelet transfusion. However, when the white blood count drops too much, there is no such thing as white blood cell transfusion. So infection becomes one of the major risks during chemotherapy. The doctor had to make sure that the patient gets out of neutropenia as soon as possible. This is usually done by injecting a growth factor called Neupogen to stimulate the bone marrow to produce white blood cell.

See you next post :-)