17

Today is the 17th.  Incredible how time flies by.  I've now been back in active treatment for four and a half months.  I've had a chest xray, an MRI, a bone scan, an ultrasound, one surgery (to place my port) and 4 CT scans (if you include the one they did during the liver biopsy).  Plus 17 doses of chemo. 

I'm off next week - it's nice to have the extra time for my body to rest.  Mike's been collecting my blood counts each week and analyzing the data (surprising, right!?). It's interesting to see how my counts go up in the weeks that I am off and then they gradually drop with each week of treatment.  This is for my white blood count (the normal range is 4.8-10.3 x 10^3/mm^3).  It's also interesting that I jumped significantly in early November (actually into the normal range!) -- hopefully that's a sign that my body is learning to handle the chemo (as opposed to a sign that the chemo isn't working as well?)  I prefer to believe the former... after all... after 17 treatments, I've got to be getting better at this, right?