So chemo has started, the job has been shelved, and I am focusing on my health. I just completed the second round of chemo (Docetaxel on a three week cycle) and caught myself a nice head cold that started a week ago. The cold seemed fairly benign besides the sinus headache but it was followed up with a slight fever Tuesday night. For those who are unfamiliar, fevers during chemo are dealt with seriously. Mine happened to start at midnight and the on call doc properly suggested I go to the nearest ER to get checked out. Begrudgingly I followed the suggestion hoping that this wouldn't be a long ordeal. Chemo drugs cause a drop in your immune system and a fever is a sure warning sign that you have an infection your body can't quite handle. Sure enough, the blood work showed that my neutrophil counts were low enough to be considered neutropenic. This means that my body is unable to deal with a bacterial infection by itself so they hooked me up to IV antibiotic drugs and admitted me to the hospital. Luckily Lorri came along so I wasn't dealing with this alone.
At this point I figured that I had just an overnight stay at the hospital. Should be out of here by Thursday, right? Guess not. My neutrophil counts have actually been dropping for three straight days which is in the wrong direction. I think I'll be lucky if I get back up to stable levels by Monday. I guess it was a good thing I went to the ER when I did because that infection (which was likely a UTI but not detectable now) probably would have gotten much worse if left to my own self to resolve. The IV antibiotics have cleaned up shop and all my lab tests show no infections and I feel good. Now it is just a waiting game until those counts come back up to normal. Until then I'll be attempting not to go stir crazy in here.
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