68 degrees and climbing

Atlanta weather took a sudden change into spring. The past couple of days the temperature has been sunny and in the high 60s, lovely spring weather resulting in large numbers of daffadils blooming out in the yard.

This was good timing, as the SHEA (Society for Health Care Epidemiology and ?) meeting took place in Atlanta this weekend and large numbers of medical scientists and other professionals descended on our fair city as a result. Including Stu Johnson with whom I had a lovely dinner on Friday night. Between the two of us, we caught up on most of our fellow interns from so many years ago. Stu came equipped with a thumb drive full of the latest photos of his family and friends, but neither he or I could figure out how to download it to my Mac. So I had to settle for verbal descriptions.

My ability to enjoy the lovely weather was impaired by being required to again travel to Gainesville for the usual weekly laboratory testing on Thursday, but then in addition to spend part of Friday being typed and crossed (lab testing in prep for another transfusion) at Northside Hospital in Atlanta and then spend most of today at Northside actually getting the 2 units of packed red blood cells. The Friday experience was prolonged because for the first time my port did not seem to be working well - but that was straightened out in the end. (My port is a permenant indwelling thing that allows me to have blood drawn and receive chemo or transfusions or other things by vein without having to have a new IV placed each time).

But now post transfusion again my energy is higher and tomorrow, Sunday, is another open day. Hopefully the good weather will hold, I will get some chores done at home and have some time to spend sitting in the yard enjoying the weather...

Monday will be the first treatment of my last cycle of standard chemotherapy. That means it will be my last 3 drug treatment day (Taxol, Carboplatin, and Avastin), and will be followed by 2 successive Mondays of 1 drug only (Taxol - the flower power drug), after which I will have completed the standard chemotherapy portion of this treatment. That will be followed by the investigational phase during which i will continue to get Avastin IV once every 3 weeks for approximatly a year. However, the Avastin alone is not expected to have a big impact other than further beating the cancer into submission. I expect that after April 5 my hair should start growing back, my strength and mental concentrating ability should begin to return, and I should be able to start building back in multiple way and return to work.