Going backwards?

No chemo again this week. Rion's white blood cells have gone down even further than they were last week and the risk of infection is too great to try and take another cycle right now. The local oncologist wants him to bring his medication with him next week so they can discuss lowering his dosage so he'll be able to take at least something instead of staying off chemo completely. Rion is going to call Duke today and relay all of this information and get their opinion.

The shingles continue to be painful but as long as Rion stays on top of it he can keep it from being unbearable. Right now that means taking the maximum amount of pain medication but if it's working, whatever. Of course we are rightfully concerned about him getting hooked on the stuff but they'll be plenty of time later to worry about that we he isn't in constant pain. The oncologist today gave him a few extra days worth of Acyclovir to take after the initial 10 days are up. We also found last night that calamine lotion helps as well as soaking in a bath of domeboro or using it to make compresses. The blisters continue to get bigger but some areas did seem to show signs of improvement this morning.

Hopefully this will clear up soon, the white blood cells will rebound and we'll be back on track to at least take some, any, dosage of chemo. I'm "grounding" Rion and doing all the grocery shopping, errand running to lessen his chances of coming in contact with any sickies. It's a miracle (thank you God) that we survived the trip to the ER on Sunday.

Blessings,

Emily