Post Memorial Day Update

Hey everyone,

Last week, one of our friends, Bernadine Donovan, took Laurie to her chemo appt, and they had a great time catching up! Laurie’s hemoglobin went up .1, which was disappointing to her, but the doctor said that being stable is good. While he knows she wants her energy back, it takes a while. In the past, they had medicine that would trigger the creation of red blood cells just like Neulasta did for the white blood cells in the 1st round of chemo, but Procrit was pulled from the treatment plans about a year ago since there was evidence it caused strokes. So, Laurie will just have to be patient to get that energy back! She finds that she has energy on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but then the rest of the week she needs to take naps. Luckily, this weekend was a holiday weekend so we had a relaxing time. Ridge played in his very 1st 8U All Stars baseball tournament in Manassas, and it was only 1 game each morning (Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday) so Laurie could rest in the afternoons. It was strange for Forrest to be the spectator for once but he supported his brother most of the time (when he wasn’t watching other friends play or hanging out with them).

Laurie has also gotten the side effects that she was expecting between treatments 5-6 … the tingling in the fingers and toes. Since she just got it about a week ago, it hasn’t been too bad, but it may get progressively worse over the next few weeks. So please pray that she is able to cope with that symptom. The good news is that she only has 5 more of the Taxol/Herceptin treatments. Then she will have a week “off” of treatment (probably more medical appts though) and then start her radiation the week after July 4th. She will also switch to only Herceptin treatments every 3 weeks at that time, and the possible side effects are rash and heart issues (Laurie has an echocardiogram every 3 months to watch for any issues as A/C could have caused that as well.

This week, Laurie had her treatment on Tuesday due to the Memorial Day holiday and then will switch back to Mondays next week. While she had some last minute concerns to address at work related to her working part time while going on long-term disability, she was reminded while she was waiting for her monthly oncology check-up that if God takes care of the little sparrows, He will also take care of us, and all seemed to fade back into perspective (Matthew 6:25-34). Thank you God for your ways of reminding us of what really is important!

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