Gemcitabine Cycle 1: Day 3

It's like Alice in Wonderland today.
I have the most unusual observation stats since January 2010.
My fevers have totally gone, In stead of running even a normal body temp of say 36.8C I'm chillin out at around 35.5 and feel totally comfortable. No need for panadol or nurofen to keep it under control and damage my liver.

My oxygen saturation which has been as low as mid 80's, where most people are 97-99, is today sitting on 97-98 with no external oxygen support.

But the biggest surprise is my heart rate. It's been banging along at 115-130 (at rest) for over two years now.
Today I managed to idle at 60bpm until I got excited when I saw the reading and it popped up to a still completely normal 70bpm. The two units of whole blood today will have helped there too.

I'm guessing that it's all possibly temporary and due to the high power Dexamethasone steroid I've been on since Tuesday. I don't want to get my hopes up about anything. However Dr D'Souza was very impressed with the stats and couldn't say for sure whether they were from the chemo or the steroid. I'll find out over the next few days as today was the last day on Dex. If every returns to it's normal, abnormal mayhem then we shall know it's all just steroid induced.

Wonderful though to have a heart rate that doesn't rev like a 2-stroke lawnmower for once. A body temp that's rock solid normal and some oxygen getting to my muscles!

A good news day! May there be many more!!   ..Ron

Gemcitabine cycle 1: Day 2

Nothing to report much over yesterday. Still have a stable body temp meaning no fevers or chills.
My itch seems to be slightly better for it too. Would be nice if it just faded away, but for now I'm assuming that the lack of sweating is the reason it's not so bad.

Very fatigued today, probably a mix of low haemoglobin and chemo. I'm suffering "chemo brain" too. It seems to take me ages to get thoughts out of my head and verbalise them. Doing invoices, writing emails etc is just painfully slow and full of typos first off. It will pass after a few months post chemo completion... hopefully.

Till tomorrow..  Ron

Gemcitabine Cycle 1, Day 1

Just a quick update of how things are after 24 hours.
I have no nausea so that's great.
The powerful steroid Dexamethasone which is part of the regime has knocked my daily fevers for six and my temperature has sat firmly in the 35deg range now for a day. This is great as it means no having to wake in the middle of the night to take paracetamol to avoid those terrible shivering fevers.
I only take this steroid for four days, so we shall see what happens from there.

So, so far so good, but way too early to see changes in the any Hodgkins B-symptoms.
Loosing the all over body itch would be the strongest signal that the drug is working.
We shall see how things go in a few more days.

...Ron

Day 0, First cycle of Gemcitabine

Yesterday as usual, was another flat out day in hospital.
Got to the day ward with Sarah at around 9:30am and had a line put in my left arm.
Thankfully that went well and the cannula slid in first attempt.
Next up two units of platelets so I could go into surgery and have a new PICC line installed without serious bleeding.
My platelet count was a new record for me "2"! Even the surgeon said he'd never seen one so low.
(That's around 1/200th of the normal level for a male)
The two units would have bumped it up to around twenty, enough to perform the procedure without too much bleeding.
So we then headed off to the theatre to get the new line put in. As usual for me and PICC lines it didn't go well.
After finally getting the line into position the surgeon decided that it was too tight in the vein and therefore posed a risk of clotting. He removed the new PICC line and started over again on my left arm. That went in quite easily, but as he worked on the left arm the right arm began to bleed again and a pressure bandage was quickly applied to the small hole in my arm where the blood was pouring straight from the vein.

It's left a lovely big bruise and an outline of the original dressing on my arm. Who needs tattoos?
Once back at the day ward we put in another unit of blood to keep my counts up.


Note the tiny hole in the middle that goes
into the vein and from there the PICC line
made it's way to my lungs.
(before it was scrapped)

Then back in again today where upon I received my first cycle of Gemcitabine. Along with more blood and platelets. So far so good. I'm waiting for the nausea to start. It may never come, That's certainly the hope. I guess I'll know by this time tomorrow. I have plenty of drugs to counter it, so not too worried.
There's other side effects like sore throats etc. But the worse will be the neutropenia (low white cell and neutrophil count) that could leave me open to life threatening infections. Sarah and I shall have to be super diligent. Neutropenic sepsis can kill you in a matter of hours.

I'll post again once I see any changes.   ..Ron