Round 7 - quick update. Need eyebrows - use Nacho sauce.

Woohoo round 7 chemo is complete, I'm now in recovery stage waiting for blood counts to do their thing.  Chemo started Tuesday 1st May with the usual cycle of loads of fluids making me put on 6kgs of weight over about 4 days, allied to this is lack of sleep due to the steroids and the need to lose weight!  I usually have 2 down days where I don't turn on the TV, eat, read or do anything - a lady I met in the hospital said that on the Thursday I looked "dreadful".  Most would say I look like that most of the time! 

I was let out on the Saturday, relaxed at home on Sunday and due to a public holiday Monday was a little bit more active - some would say too active!  I'll explain.  Liz and I went for a walk on the local walking paths alongside the creek, we walked  about 3.5kms which wasn't too bad since I was just out of hospital.  Then a cool LL&B before heading home. An hour or so later we tripped back to the cinema with Kyle in tow, to see the 'Avengers' movie, followed by dinner at Hog's Breath Cafe.  I chose nachos - my appetite was just getting back to normal.  Anyway I enjoyed my meal, unable to eat it all but what can you expect.  So we are sitting in the restaurant chatting & I felt hot, partly due to the spicy nachos and the reasonably warm restaurant.  Next thing Liz is clutching my shoulders saying "Alan, Alan are you ok?"  Well 30 seconds later I was ok and you guessed it I'd passed out into my nachos.  Poor Liz was sitting opposite and looked up to find me slumped into the food, she had to revive me & wipe off the remnants of dinner - hence the reference to Nacho eyebrows!!  So I'd definitely overdone it a bit that afternoon.  After 10 minutes I was well enough to walk home and we've had a few post-event laughs over this and nachos seems to be the joke topic of the moment.  As a penance I put my Facebook profile picture as a bowl of nachos,  thankfully Kyle was a bit slow off the mark and there is no photo evidence of my misfortune.  Mmmmmm (below!)

Last Friday 11th, I was back in day oncology to receive a very short chemo treatment and was neutropenic.  Thankfully I was able to convince them that to avoid infection I'm better off at home and was not admitted into a boring hospital room with hospital food!  I had to pop back Saturday morning (yesterday) for more platelets, which thankfully was a non event. 

So, now I just have to let my blood counts recover and head back on the 22nd to see Tony and hopefully start round 8 which in theory is the last chemo.  At the same time I'll be asking Tony where we go after round 8, ie. testing, defining whether I am in remission and so on.  This will of course be the start of a new direction in my journey - so please think of me, pray if you wish and hopefully I'll be back to normal blood counts over the next few months, with work, life, and so on.

Alan