I bet I have more white cells than you do!

Even though I forgot to say my "rabbit, rabbit" for luck when I woke up this morning, September started off with a great appointment.

I got another neulasta shot on Friday which made for an extremely uncomfortable Saturday and Sunday. Back pains, fever, and general grumpiness. It wasn't for nothing, though, because today my white count was 24.3! Normal range is 4.0-14.0, so right now I've got white cells to spare and could probably lick the sidewalk and not get sick (no plans to do that, though). That will go down and settle to a more reasonable number (hopefully 4.0 or above) but the fact that it raised to more than 3 times higher than my after my previous dose means that I have cooked up even more marrow. Win! My red blood cells raised .5 since my last visit to 23.5 and my platelets were 22, hovering around the threshold for transfusion. That meant that today was another great day without needing an IV needle. I'll take it.

Since the neulasta has been working so well, my doctor gave me a similar shot today called epogen which will raise my red cells and in turn give me much more energy. If it works, that could mean the end of red cell transfusions for me (since I seem to be making new red cells on my own anyway, the epogen will just speed it up). The hope is to also get me on a similar shot for my platelets, especially since those have been the slowest to recover, but that medicine is new and requires special ordering so it won't be here for another week or so. Barring any major setbacks or wrong turns, that could mean that the need for all transfusions will be over in a couple weeks. I'll still need weekly doctor's appointments to get booster shots until my marrow is making normal levels of all my blood junk on its own, but the visits will be significantly shorter. Now please go knock on wood. I don't want to press my luck.

In my last post I didn't do justice to my wonderful trip to Canada with Kevin. Canada was fantastic and not nearly as Canadian as I had anticipated. Despite not running into any Degrassi stars I loved Toronto and it was neat/boring (in a neat way) to see Kevin's nerd school. The best part was definitely meeting his super nice, funny family because they were nice and funny and his mom bought me delicious Canadian candy bars. I thought Kevin was great before, but now he comes with candy bars! I am lucky. The next weekend all my best best friends from college were in Boston together for a nice but all too brief visit, and now it is September which is my favorite month. More wins!

I'd like to thank everyone who has complimented me on my positive attitude throughout this whole ordeal. I've been very lucky to be sharing good news lately, but to be fair, it has definitely not been all sunshine and roses. I didn't really feel like blogging during the uglier side of this, but I have for sure had my share of doctor's appointments left in tears/not feeling like getting out of bed/sad, low, bratty moments. I am lucky to have people who love me enough to let me take it out on them and ride it out with me. Thankfully those moments are getting fewer and farther between and will hopefully stay that way. I will continue to update you (my loyal blog readers) on my progress and will let you know immediately if I get another hug from Dr. Tzachanis.