Vampire Breakfast

Gross or Great?

It’s been awhile. Sorry. I’ve been tired. And busy. And enjoying all the joys that I can enjoy in this beautiful life. There are many of them!

Yesterday I went to get my day 8 chemo, you know the second one in the 3 week cycle. I was feeling great and was ready to kill some cancer…and then my labs came back. I knew things were up to no good because my favorite nurse was taking too long to return after drawing my blood. Of course, I was right, things were amiss. No cancer could be killed. I was super duper neutropenic, again. My white blood cells and my neutrophils were very low, too low to safely administer the meds. DAMN IT. No white cells, no neutrophils, damn it, no immune system. Not only that, I was low low low low low in the hemoglobin department.

Do you know what happens when you’re neutropenic? Usually, nothing. You wait for your cells to come back. Sometimes you get a shot to boost production. Do you know what happens when you have extra low hemoglobin numbers? I think you know. Vampire breakfast. Or, as the scientists amongst us might say, enjoy your day, starting with a blood transfusion!

Ooooooeeee blood of a stranger, that sounds…..um, nice. I’ve done this one time before. Other than the fact that I can see the bag of not my blood going into me, it doesn’t feel any different than any other IV I get. And, since I’m me, when all this went down yesterday I told my doctor, whatever you do, please make sure I go to the place that’s the best, the most comfortable, the best best best. You know what? She delivered. She tends to deliver on these kinds of things. So, gratefully, my nurse is a lovely wonderful caregiver and I’ve had my own private room to enjoy my vampire breakfast and do some crosswords and deliver this news.

When the transfusion is over I should feel better, more energized, less lethargic. They say my face has already pinked up a lot. I love that for me. No one wants to look the color gray, amiright? Then, we’ll chemo next week, the very soonest we can, because this vampire lady wants to kill some cancer, yo.