Hi everyone:
My apologies for going so long without providing updates on Kathleen's condition. I had some problems with the login information for this blog, and was unable to sort out the bugs until recently. For much of the time, we've had little to share, other than that Kathleen's continued to receive chemo treatments that aren't doing the job. Each new treatment seems to do a yeoman's job of making Kathleen feel miserable but diddly-squat at improving her blood counts. Lately, her numbers have grown alarming.
As I write this, Kathleen is at the hospital receiving both platelets and whole blood. Since May, her platelets have fluctuated between a low of 8 to a high of 29; 140-440 is normal. This morning, her platelets hit an all-time low of 3, so low she's at risk of serious blood loss from even the smallest scrape, nick or bump. She's being treated by doctors as though she's a china doll, and that's not entirely inaccurate.
Kathleen's hemoglobin is at 8.4 (normal is 12-16); this is usually the number that concerns doctors (and us) more, because Kathleen is more symptomatic when her hemoglobin counts are down. Just to give an idea, her hemoglobin was at 6.8 a week or so ago, and tends to run in the 6-9 range as long as she's receiving frequent infusions of blood. Unfortunately, she seems to be needing these boosts more and more often.
Kathleen also lost three pounds suddenly about a week ago, even though her appetite has been decent. Fortunately, her weight hadn't dipped further this morning.
We're of course worried about all this--as is Kathleen--but we've seen her do some pretty amazing bounce-backs before...
I'll do my best to keep things more current around here moving forward...
Love,
Brian
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