"The Empty Well" and Other Tales from the Chemo Chair

It's a Friday afternoon and it was already apparent that an infusion of Daratumumab and Kyprolis would not be happening today. Today, I would be getting an infusion of platelets. Again. Nurse Janice came into the treatment room to speak to me about the next steps of my treatment and to answer all the questions I had. My platelet and hemoglobin counts are low. They are so low that my body cannot keep up with the production of them and it is virtually eating them, which is why I require the infusions.

Nurse Janice asked if I had any headaches. Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I pointed to a location on the side of my head that lay between the top of my left ear and left eyebrow. Since we hadn't resolved the issue of my numb chin and lower lip, she scheduled a CT scan of my brain. Strangely enough, another headache occurred yesterday evening. I woke up this morning to discover that the left side of my face was now slightly numb. We really need to get in there and find out what is going on in there.

While we were doing all of this, we also it would be prudent to call for another bone marrow biopsy. This was very exciting to me because it had only been a little more than two months since the previous one. The need for this one was to see just how ineffective my little platelet and hemoglobin factories are.

Once we receive the results of these scans and tests, we should have a much clearer picture of how we can correct this and get the chemo infusions back on track.

All we can do is hope.