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| Scaling the wall |
The Vinblastine has done a number on my white blood cell
count. The plan was to get weekly infusions, but my bone marrow has said
otherwise. To give it some credit, I have been very heavily treated and my
marrow is quite compromised. I’m proud to see that it has still been able to
produce blood cells at all – for this I am grateful. I’ve never been unable to
rise back to normal blood count levels with time or drug assistace.
To remain safe, my WBC count has to be at least 1,000 in
order to receive treatment. It hasn't been able to stabilize quickly enough to
endure the original, aggressive weekly plan, so I've been more on an biweekly
treatment basis. My counts were too low to get treated last Wednesday (ANC 0.6),
which is why I felt pretty good last week and this past weekend without the
chemo effects. In fact, I felt good enough for a day of indoor rock climbing
with Craig. It was our first time and something we both loved. I especially
loved the sweet reward of getting to the top and the mental challenge it took
to figure out how to get there. I had no problems beyond any normal climbing
fatigue and a few battle bruises endured from banging my knees into the wall.
It was an exhilarating, rewarding and gratifying experience. There will be more
of these types of adventures to come for me in 2012.
