Trucking Through Cycle 2

Sorry for the late post!  Christmas can be quite the distraction - even a distraction from cancer!

Regardless - Thursday afternoon we took our weekly trip to Moorland Reserve.  It was very quite the day after Christmas in the middle of the afternoon.  Andy was in his blood draw for about one minute!  

THEN - we got me signed up for Andy's MyChart account, which means I will also receive all notifications now when test results are available - Yippie!

And just in time...I received my first alert very quickly:

Hg - 12 - Up from 11.3 (and this is why we don't worry about small fluctuations!)

Platelets - 227 - Up from 199 

ANC - 2.7 - Down from 4.0 (I don't love it...but it's still higher than our threshold of 1.0...)  

Total protein 7.0 - down from 7.7 

Also - we got a few late labs last week that I failed to update - 

IgG - Continues to drop from 2.94 to 1.59 (This is a very important number that we want to be 0 - or as close to it as possible). 

Our Kappa / Lambda Light Chain Ratio increased to .49.  I still don't understand light chain individual numbers, and have that as a note for next week's Dr. Al visit.  I know they are related to proteins and the Kappa and the Lambda make the total protein.  Andy's cancer only allows him to make partial proteins...and partial proteins floating around in the blood stream is not good - they take up space for the good things we want that then can't create because they don't have room.  The closer that ratio is to 1 (I THINK) the better it is because it means less partial proteins floating around.  BUT over all the IgG number and overall protein numbers are down...so....I guess that's all good.  One thing I'll say about my previous experience with cancer - Brain Cancer was FAR easier to understand. Orrrrr, maybe it was the lack of access to all these lab results 😬

So - overall, all our numbers looked good and we prepared ourselves for our treatment.  

We were called back into the infusion area and waited for our Dara to warm up.  Andy gets a week off of the Velcade, per our medication schedule, so just one injection this week. 

He will also get a week off of the oral medication, Revlimid, starting tomorrow, as scheduled, per our treatment schedule.  So just one medication for the next few days until we see Dr. Al on Thursday 01/02.  I'm assuming that has to help his total ANC number?  

We went through all the typical reaction / side effect questions with the nurse, none of our responses have changed and none of them are concerning on any level.  We like to keep it that way. 

Andy received his treatment like a champ and we were out the door!  As we both had off that day, we ordered some lunch, cleaned up the Christmas mess and then met some family and friends to walk around the zoo and look at some Christmas lights.  You would never have known that earlier in the day we were at the cancer center receiving life saving medications.  

So - in summary, cancer is weird.  Andy is a rock star.  Christmas is chaotic!