Lesson Learned

My mom drafted her "future" schedule twice -- first to reflect the inital June transplant date, which was then amended to the hopeful May transplant date.

Unfortunately, neither date really applies now! After her third round of chemotherapy, her thrombocyte count (platelet count) was so low that to undergo her fourth round of chemotherapy would have risked her losing her bone marrow function altogether. Instead, we waited for her platelet count to slowly rise, starting from 45000 and finally hitting the Golden 125,000 three and a half weeks later, well after her scheduled date for her fourth round.

Just last night she started her fourth round. Who knows what might have happened internally during that long reprieve from chemotherapy, that length of six weeks? (Although, emotionally, physically, my mother is just about as strong as ever, as she enjoyed sleeping in her own bed, walking around, even doing a spot of gardening.)

Given that, she's learned her lesson: take things one day at a time. Forget about scheduling the transplant date; let's just mark our progress by small increments until that day does come.

On other fronts, the progress has been frustrating as well. During her initial apheresis a month ago, they hoped to collect 10 million stem cells, so they could use the optimal 5 million for her first transplant and preserve the remainder in case she relapsed and needed another transplant.

They only got 2 million, total. So she'll undergo apheresis again after this fourth round and hopefully that'll do the magic -- otherwise, they'll just have to do with the borderline collection. (Incidentially, her collection amount is not atypical; it's just frustrating.)

She also had the unfortunate incident of being given a drug to which she's allergic. Thankfully, my mother still has the presence of mind to have recognized it and then refused. However, this really highlights the arena of error in nursing and medicine (why it was ordered by the doctor and then administered by the nurse). I worry about how other patients who are either uneducated (about drug families or generic/brand names, etc.) or unable to recognize this danger as it often presents itself.