{"id":4763,"date":"2006-01-13T23:29:57","date_gmt":"2006-01-13T23:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=4763"},"modified":"2025-09-24T03:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T03:44:10","slug":"friday_night_fi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=4763","title":{"rendered":"Friday night fifth day update"},"content":{"rendered":"

11:15PM and I am having my last dose of chemotherapy, which will run until after midnight. This is my eighth cycle of Etoposide, which I\u2019ve received every 12 hours since Tuesday (Monday I had something else \u2013 can\u2019t remember the name) at 10am and 10pm.<\/p>\n

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Saturday I will get a dose of Melphalan, in the morning and then no more chemotherapy.<\/p>\n

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The description of the various chemo drugs I\u2019ve gotten this time around all say the same thing: \u201cstops cancer cells from growing by interfering with DNA, the genetic material in cells\u201d. <\/p>\n

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Sunday is a day off, and then on Monday I\u2019ll have my stem cells and white blood cells re-injected through the IV catheter, a process that will take around 30 minutes. <\/p>\n

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If all goes according to schedule, my blood cell levels will suddenly drop as a result of the chemotherapy, sometime around Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. They will go close to zero. This is when the side effects kick in, and I\u2019ll be getting blood and platelet transfusions over the space of several days. <\/p>\n

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My blood counts should start rising in a few days (as the stem cells \u201cknow what to do\u201d, migrating back to the bone marrow) and then suddenly zoom up, in a mirror image of how they first dropped. If you graph it out, it looks a little bite like the mouth on a smiley button.<\/p>\n

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So that\u2019s the situation. Compared to what many other people are having on this floor – transplants of stem cells or bone marrow from donors<\/u> \u2013 I have it pretty easy. I haven\u2019t met any patients, even though I am allowed to go out of my room (that will change when they give me my cells back) since most everyone is confined to their rooms. There are a total of 25 rooms on this floor, all for transplant patients, and essentially the rooms are always filled.<\/p>\n

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Brigid was here again today, along with my friend and assistant Judy Anderson. Will post some pictures tomorrow.<\/p>\n

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11:15PM and I am having my last dose of chemotherapy, which will run until after midnight. This is my eighth cycle of Etoposide, which I\u2019ve received every 12 hours since Tuesday (Monday I had something else \u2013 can\u2019t remember the name) at 10am and 10pm. Saturday I will get a dose of Melphalan, in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-lymphoma-and-related-medical-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6676,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4763\/revisions\/6676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}