Harold had his labs repeated Wednesday morning. They aren’t “quite right” to start the Temodar yet. Here’s the rundown from Monday to Wednesday:
- White Blood Count went up from 2.2 to 2.7 (GOOD)
- SEG went down from 51 to 42 (NOT GOOD)
- Platelets went up from 121 to 134 (REAL GOOD)
Duke takes the total from WBC * SEG% to get his Neutrophil total. 2.7 * 42% = 1.1 Neutrophil. The neutrophil is the percentage of white blood cells that fights off infection. If this number is too low, then his body is not ready for chemo. The last couple months, Harold’s neutrophil has been around 1.5 or 1.4 and they weren’t thrilled with those numbers. So, they definitely didn’t feel comfortable with 1.1 for Harold to begin his Temodar. The other good news is that Harold has gained 2 lbs from last month, so his dosage increased from 350mg to 360mg. (the good news is his weight gain, of course!)
Harold was bummed about not being able to start, but I explained to him why he has to wait and he understands the reasons. Duke wanted Harold to wait one more day, since his labs were on the upswing. He’ll start his chemo tonight and will finish up Monday night. Hopefully, the phenergan will help with nausea this time.
As for his Temodar prescription? Well, that’s a whole other story to tell. To keep it short, his Temodar was on backorder and the pharmacy didn’t know when to expect it. But, they were able to fill the prescription by borrowing some from the main hospital pharmacy. Unlucky for us…because they didn’t have the exact dosage, they had to combine some 100mg, 20 mg and 5 mg to equal the total. What does this mean? It means Harold has 7 pills to swallow every night, not the usual 2-5 pills. I gather that it’s going to take some time to get all of them down each night. When he had to take 5 pills one month, I think it took Harold almost an hour to finally get them down. That’s such a bad feeling too…to be nauseous, yet have to swallow a pill.
Oh and the details to our Free Virginia Beach vacation is starting to come together. More details to follow…we’re very excited!!
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