Almost Done!
I started my first pills of my last cycle of chemo today! I'll be done on March 30th and I'm celebrating that night! It can't come fast enough! It's been a bit of a week and next week will be more of the same. Seven appointments this week and next and I have another appointment still to make. The good news is that I saw the breast surgeon on Monday and she said the lump on the right side is lymphedema and referred me to the lymphedema clinic for PT.
The crappy news is that she ordered an ultrasound for the one of the left. It's either lymphedema, scar tissue, or bone mets. Don't Google that. I made that mistake already and in the course of researching found out that since my tumor had a tubular formation and is triple negative, I'm in a 2% category of black/Hispanic women over the age of 50. WTH 🤣 Ultrasound is scheduled for Tuesday and hopefully the radiologist will give me the BIRADS score again. It's a scale that will give me an idea of what this is and if it needs a biopsy and the chance that it's another cancer.
While I was there, I was put on bed rest because my feet suck. 🙄 At least Niko kept me company while I was relegated to the couch with elevated feet. I have hand and foot syndrome which is the most common side effect of Xeloda. My nails are separating which isn't ideal, but my feet are black and spotted and hurt sometimes when I walk a lot. I overdid it over the weekend and by Monday, I was hobbling a bit. I worked from home on Monday through Wednesday and then hobbled a bit yesterday, but today was much better. I walked in and out like a normal person instead of lumbering. 😁
I had labs and saw Dr. Khanal this morning. My blood pressure was 100/59 which is low. My counts and platelets are low which is to be expected, but not so low that I need a transfusion so that's great news. I wasn't looking forward to putting someone else's blood with mine. 🤢 He said I was good to move ahead with this last cycle so I stay on track. The hand and foot and other side effects are manageable for another few weeks until I can start detoxing and start getting back to normal.
My CBC hadn't come back yet by the end of our appointment so he called me this afternoon. Apparently my red blood cell morphology (shape) is abnormal and I have poikilocytosis and my macrocytosis level is moderate (my red blood cells are larger than normal). From what I can gather, it means that body tissues aren't getting enough oxygen delivered by the red blood cells. Hoping this rebounds and goes back to normal once I'm done with these pills.
On a much more fun note, I finished a super cool gift that I can't post because it's for someone who will be reading this, but suffice it to say that I love it and it was super fun to make it. Tomorrow, I'll be making a couple floor cards for my exchange and then scrapbooking with Angel for a few hours to try to catch up on stuff. I have scrapbooked since summer of 2021. I got into diamond art and took that to our October 2021 crop then shit got the fan in November. I was too sick in January to go, April I slept most of it, then July was my surgery so nothing happening there. This last October, I was working on Christmas gifts for my grandparents and my mom and then January this year, I had to get my birthday cards done for the year. I've got a stack of pages that are done, but not in scrapbooks, and some other pages that I duplicated accidentally after I created the pages and then lost them and had to redo. So much stuff to focus on in the craft realm! Keeping calm and crafting 😁