Day 5 - better results

Well finally some good news to report - my liver toxicity levels are half of what they were yesterday so the good news is that chemo is going ahead as planned today. They do not know what has caused the problem but at least I am on the mend now (the levels are still 10 times what they should be but at least they are on the way down). I had an ultrasound yesterday and I have swelling on my gall bladder as well. They could not find any gallstones so again they are not sure of the cause of it but apparently that explains the pain I am having. They have started me on antibiotics to see if that clears it all up.

Today is my last day of chemo for this round - yeah. Tomorrow I start the GCSF injections to return my immune system to normal and to coax the stem cells out of the bone marrow and into the peripheral blood (isn't it amazing what modern medicine can achieve).

Cam and the kids visited last night and that was great. It was lovely to have some great cuddles with them and Tiernan accompanied me down to the ultrasound and sat in the room whilst I had it. He told the sonographer that mummy was having special medicine to get rid of the bugs inside her so that she could come home and spend lots of time with him! It made my heart melt!

Not much else to report so I will sign off for now.

New Blogg Site - Day 4 of chemo

My old blogg site ran out of space so I had to get a new one. I decided to go with the blogger site as it has a heap of great features and makes it a lot easier for me to post my bloggs.

I realised that it had been quite awhile since I had posted any updated photos of the kids so here they are. The first two photos were taken by my wonderful friend Amanda last week. This photo of Arielle in her gorgeous pink dress was taken in January by my aunty Alice, when Alice, mum, Arielle and I went to High Tea.

Unfortunately the liver situation is not improving. There is some liver toxicity count in my blood that was 43 on Monday (10 - 45 is normal) and it is now up to 810 and climbing each day. They are quite certain at present that it is a drug related toxicity rather than the cancer having gone to my liver as it is such an acute change. There is a suspicion it could be caused from Panadol however it would have had to have been very high doses and I would remember taking that as I hate swallowing panadols! They are checking whether anyone has given me IV Panadol. Although none of the chemo drugs should be causing this type of toxic reaction, if the counts continue to go up tomorrow then they will have to stop the chemo and see if that relieves the problem. So all in all I am not feeling so well at present. The only pain relief I can use is hot packs as they do not want to introduce any more drugs into the equation!

The tumour increasing in size a little is not of a concern at present and Kerry said I will have another CT in about 6 weeks and he will assess how it is going then. It is quite normal for the tumour to initially swell upon commencement of chemo.

The last problem of the day is that my HB levels have fallen and I have to have a blood transfusion. I am not bothered by that as they always make me feel better anyway!

My hospital stay has been quite a social one this time. On Monday Cam came to visit. Then on Tuesday, mum and Natalie brought Arielle and Tiernan in to visit and then Kylie and Emily came in and visited and then took Tiernan home with them for a sleepover (can you believe this he ate raw beans and lettuce - at home he wont even let me put lettuce on his plate!! And he slept until 6.15am - he usually battles to sleep past 5.30am at home!). Yesterday was a lovely social day. Jane and Lucy visited me for most of the day and we had a lovely time catching up and chatting. In the evening I had a lovely visit from Justin a friend that I used to work with in the UK. He lives with his wife Tania in Melbourne but is up in Brisbane for work for a few weeks. Today Cam will come in and visit and then this afternoon he will pick up the kids from daycare and bring them in to have dinner with me. So I am certainly not getting a chance to get bored or feel sorry for myself which is really great.