HOLD

Onward and upward has been the momentum and path I have been on for the past 7 weeks. Until today, cycle 8 of 12 when I was abruptly jolted out of my routine. And the worst past is it’s OUT OF MY CONTROL and at the same time completely normal. In short, my white blood counts came back lower than what is allowed for treatment, so I was just able to get iron infusion.

The plan is to come back Friday for a shot to help raise my white blood counts (waiting on insurance approval) and then will hopefully resume treatment on Monday.

I am mad and totally distraught over the news today. For me, the hardest part of all of this is that I feel fine so physically I feel like I should be able to get treatment as planned. The second hardest part is that there is not anything I can be doing outside of treatments to help keep these up.

I am thankful to have a medical team on top of my blood results to act quickly and adjust as needed- even though I am emotionally not on board. Today was an extremely hard day.

Learnings:

Chemotherapy is a commonly used treatment for cancer. These powerful cancer-fighting drugs work by killing the fastest-growing cells in the body—both good and bad. This means that along with killing cancer cells, your healthy white blood cells, called neutrophils, are killed too.

With a low white blood cell count and, in particular, a low level of neutrophils, you're at higher risk of developing an infection. And if you develop an infection when you have a low white blood cell count, your body can't protect itself. Infection can lead to death in severe cases.