3rd bone marrow aspiration

2/25/10

Cancer takes on a life, takes over a life, takes over many lives.  Morning until night.  Day by day.  Teri asks that only positive energy be brought into her room.  No daily complaints about work, e-mail … the little stuff.  Steve offers to ‘be my wife’ and listen to any work complaints I have.  I understand the importance of this as focusing her limited energy on positive healing.  However, this one I have to conscientiously work on.  With my reduced scheduled, I’m finding into Teri’s daily rhythm and she is happier.  We do Tai Chi Chuan together this morning. 

She undergoes her 3^rd bone marrow aspiration (2^nd bone marrow biopsy).  I hold her hand and can feel her discomfort as her clench tightens.  She says that it was not bad.  Is it the local anesthetic skill of the oncology fellow, her high pain tolerance, a numbing of her senses and/or lorazepam?  The results will tell us how effectively her short-run response to chemotherapy has been and whether there will be a modification in her therapeutic approach.

She continues to have 100 white cells, essentially no cellular immunity.  She has a worsening total body non-itchy rash.  Although it was thought to be a drug rash related to a chemotherapy agent or prophylactic antibiotic, it is now rethought by dermatology to be neutrophilic eccrine hidradenitis.  It can accompany AML, even precede it, and/or be associated with cytarabine.  She may get it again with subsequent courses.  There are bumps in the chemo road.  I have a cold so I wear a mask. 

Her older sister Terri (different saint – Theresa) arrives from California at 7:45 pm.  Despite Teri’s admonition otherwise, she insists on seeing her and we drive to the hospital.  Teri is not surprised.