Round 3 … Let’s Goooo!

August 15, 11:30 am, round 3. Today’s nurse was Kendall. Round 3 finished at 3:45 pm and home we went with the “hummer” (pump). He’ll go back at 4 pm tomorrow for shot of Zarxio and get the pump removed from the port. Then again on Sunday and Monday at 4 pm he’ll get a shot of Zarxio (this helps to keep the WBC count up). His weight was down about 4 pounds from last time probably because nothing tastes good now. He says everything pretty much tastes like cardboard (not that he eats a lot of cardboard but you know). The effects of chemo are cumulative so I guess it will get worse before it gets better no doubt.

We met with Dr Voshtina the oncologist prior to the chemo. She seemed pleased with his labs and all things were pretty much on track. Calcium a bit low. Not much else to report. The Zarxio worked to keep the white blood counts up and Neutropenia away. This is good.

Next steps are that he’ll get Round 4 of chemo in two weeks. After that round he will wait 6 weeks to recover. Then a PET scan on October 10 and another Endoscopic Ultrasound to restage and schedule surgery.

Round 2 of chemo turned out to be different than round one. Willie had more bad days of being tired but he surged ahead slowly reclaiming the orchard irrigation row by row as he could. It will take some time, a couple months, to get things working again but that’s all we have is time.

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