Posts in Category: Work In Progress

Bottoming Out

So I had appointments Wednesday and Thursday, Wednesday my white blood cell count was 0 — neutrophils are a type of white blood cell, so they were 0 as well. Thursday they were 0.01, so maybe they’re starting to bounce back, my next check is on Monday so I’m staying in this weekend and wearing a mask when I have to be in public. I had another blood transfusion on Thursday but my platelets (28) were still well above the transfusion threshold (20), so that was reassuring. A doctor told me usually it bottoms out in days 10-14, but I was on day 16 Wednesday, and that wasn’t surprising because the first couple rounds of chemotherapy had really done a number on my immune system. So I’ve been unconcerned about it.

Getting prescriptions transferred and refilled has been a lot more annoying than I would have otherwise expected, but I think I have it all straightened out finally.

Longer term my next appointment with the doctors is Monday the 23rd, and if my numbers look good they’ll admit me for another round of consolidation chemotherapy — so I get to look forward to repeating all this again in the next few weeks. After that I guess we’ll be looking at how to get someone else’s immune cells into me, but so far the donor search hasn’t found any 10 of 10 matches. If they can’t find any match I guess they’ll do a partial match, which carries a greater risk that the donated immune system could mistake me for a foreign invader and attack me. I haven’t asked what we do if that happens, I guess I’ll ask as we get closer to that.

In other news I’m working on a toy idea inspired by curved crease origami, and just ordered a sample of a flexible material to see how much the idea might work out, so I’m kind of excited about that.

Clear Liquids!

This is an update about my health, so click the read more link below if you want to know more, otherwise feel free to skip it.

The Prescient Onion

Some friends visiting last week were remarking on how great The Onion is, which reminded me a bit later of this video, which shows they are prescient as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjonGtrCyVE

Now For Something Fun

One Day Left!

This is a post about my ongoing health issues, if you’d rather skip it, feel free, otherwise click the read more link below.

Eight Down Four to Go

This is a post about my ongoing health issues, if you’d rather skip it feel free, otherwise click the read more link below to continue on.

Half Way Through Round 2

This is an update about my health, if you’re here about my software or something else and don’t want to read about my health, feel free to skip this. Otherwise you can click the read more link and continue on, thanks!

Day 2 of HIDAC

This is an update about my health, if you’re here for something else, like my software or other projects, feel free to skip this post, otherwise you can click the read more link below.

1st day of HIDAC

This is an update about my health, if you’re here for something else, like my software or other projects, feel free to skip this post, otherwise you can click the read more link below

This is a friend typing for Cody again: Started Round 2 of chemo yesterday around 6pm, this round is HIDAC for High-Dose Cytarabine (I’m not sure what the A stands for). It’s one of the same drugs I had in Round 1 except in a much much much larger dose. I get it twice a day, 6am and 6pm and so far it seems to have made me very fatigued so I’ve spent most of the morning lying around which is why I haven’t responded to people’s messages. I had a fever last night and a cough, they think I might have an infection so they’re putting me back on more antibiotics and did a chest x-ray. They did another echocardiogram to look at my heart and they haven’t heard back the results yet. I guess that’s all for now.

-Cody

Health update

This is an update about my health, if you’re here for something else, like my software or other projects, feel free to skip this post, otherwise you can click the read more link below.