Day +86

I am fine today. Now back to my 2nd cycle of chemotherapy at UH again.

As I mentioned, I was receiving a chemotherapy regimen called “7+3”, which means that I was given a chemo drug called Ara-C throughout the 7 days and another chemo drug called Daunorubicinn for the first 3 days only. This means I was receiving both Daunorubicin and Ara-C on the first 3 days, and then Ara-C along for the following 4 days.

After the 7 days, the red blood, platelet and white blood counts started to drop. I was transfused with red blood or platelet when their count became very low. But if the white blood count was too low, a condition called neutropenia, no white blood transfusion could be done. Whenever this happened, the patient's immune system became very vulnerable to infection. In order to reduce the risk of infection, a drug called Neupogen (growth factor) was used to simulate the bone marrow to produce white blood cells. Therefore on day 8 onward, I was given Neupogen until day 23, a total of 15 doses of Neupogen. Each dose of Neupogen costs about RM260.

The patient will be allowed to go home (home leave) for two or three days immediately after all the chemo drugs for that cycle were given, provided his/her white blood count is still within acceptable level. However, I always chose not to go home because it was too troublesome to shift many personal belonging back and forth, and to go through the discharge and admission procedure, just to get two or three days of home leave. Furthermore, if a patient developed fever, bleeding or other symptoms at home, he/she had to be admitted to hospital immediately no matter when does it happened.

I had to stay in the hospital at least 21 days for a cycle of chemotherapy. You might wonder what patients normally do after chemo drugs were completely given. The answer is to wait for the blood counts to drop, fever and infection, and then for the blood counts to pick up again. Some patient managed to recover faster than me, but a small percentage of patients never recovered due to serious infection :-(

Whenever I was discharged from hospital, I praised God through the Bible verse, “Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff they comfort me.” Psalm 23:4.

“我虽然行过死阴的幽谷，也不怕遭害。 因为你与我同在。 你的杖， 你的竿， 都安慰我。”诗廿三：四

See you next post :-)