Round Two Delayed

Steve was supposed to be admitted to the hospital yesterday for the next round of chemotherapy, but his platelets are still too low to get treatment. The platelets, which are climbing,  have to be over 100,000 and he has 67,000. We'll try again on Monday.

He's also very anemic, which apparently isn't a factor in receiving more chemotherapy. But despite all that, he's feeling pretty good, and though a little disappointed yesterday to not get on with things, he's glad to have a few more days at home while he's feeling better. It's good to finally a week without chemotherapy or blood transfusions.

He's gotten a better handle on the nausea with the use of drugs and home remedies. It's hard to say what is causing the nausea, and we were wondering if it was the clinical trial drug, Dasatinib, which he has to take for a year. I did some research on the internet about Dasatinib and his particular type of core-binding AML and was excited to read that there have been many clinical trials already that have shown really good results with this drug and killing those bad cells. Given that, Steve said he will certainly will continue to take the drug, even if it causes nausea.

Thanks for your emails with your favorite hemorrhoid remedies -- and what was particularly interesting was that all the remedies were different. Who knew! BTW -- those remedies worked!

To all you FOGS -- you are the best -- thanks for getting us through this!




Visualize Platelets! They are the smooth round red cells.  Normally, platelets look round and smooth, but when they get busy plugging up cuts and wounds they become spiky and ragged around the edges.