The Lab Tests

Tuesday, Nov.29: I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We went over to Dad and Dians, ate lunch and watched the football games. Allison is redoing her bedroom, so we painted her room over the weekend. She did all the hard parts and I slowly did the trim. I have some joint pain and muscle pain in my legs and have been moving slowly the past week. It really hurts to go up and down stairs. That really is not a side effect of the AC, but it is for Taxol ( the one that I took for 4 weeks). I go to the doctor tomorrow so I will mention it to her. I take a half of a lortab if it gets too bad. Anyway, I have handled the first AC treatment surprisingly well. I never did have any nausea. I felt great during the first and second week and this third week, I felt good besides the leg pain. I did have to go for lab work on the 18th. I have to go for labs 10 days after my treatment. My white blood cell count went down lower than what they would like to see after a first treatment. My count was 5.5 prior to chemo. It dropped to 1.9. Not too good. They put me on antibiotics for 7 days and told me not to go around a lot of people. No buffets and no uncooked fruits and vegetables. The doctor said that there are germs on fresh foods that cannot be washed off. I just stayed in all weekend to be safe. We had plans to go to dinner with 3 other couples and see the show "Avenue Q" at Wynn on Monday night and we went ahead and did that. I go through a lot of purell! We all got free tickets to Avenue Q and Le Reve for opening the hotel. Robert and I went to see Le Reve last night. I have my next treatment tomorrow. I also will have to have a shot of a new drug called "neulasta" before my chemo treatment. It will make my body produce white blood cells. It also gives bone pain, so I have been told to plan on taking it easy for the first few days after the shot. It will go perfect with my muscle pain! I will have to go back in 10 days on Dec. 9 for lab work to check the white and red blood cells again. I also had to go on medicine for high blood pressure. High blood pressure is a side effect for avastin (the drug I was never supposed to be on) and mine has been too high for too long not to do something about it. So, I have to take a blood pressure drug called prinivil everyday. Overall, I am able to do about anything that I would normally do. I have to watch how active I am. I will still get really tired if I do a lot in one day. I can only run errands for about 1 and a half to 2 hours and then I am ready to rest. I have done almost all of my Christmas shopping though! Only two more people to buy for...and Jason..I don't know what to get him. I did stand in line at Best Buy for an Xbox360 and they ran out about 10 people ahead of me. I wasn't surprised. I ran into a girl I work with and she spent the night there. I showed up 10 minutes before the door opened. oh well....Wish me luck and prayers with my next treatment. Kit is going with me...I am NOT taking atavan this time. I am hoping to be well enough to see Allison's dance show at the school that night. I do not have the time to sleep for 24 hours!!