One week ago today, so Thursday December 20th, 2012, I had another port flush scheduled. While doing that, my nurse took a blood sample to test. Good. I was really hoping she would. I have been really tired lately and had raised my proverbial eyebrow.
A little backstory on why I worry about blood levels. You would think it normal for a cancer patient either in treatment or recovery or even remission to worry about their blood counts, but this goes a little beyond "normal." My last heavy round of chemo ended mid March, which made for almost exactly two years since I started this mess. I was happy to hear the test results then, "shows no sign of the disease." I had been training for my second half marathon in June and was looking forward to having a couple months to get the chemo and fatigue more out of my system. I did not push myself that race. I took it really slow, just relaxed, and enjoyed myself, not wanting to try and push hard because of the recent round of treatment.
Two and a half months after that race, I ran the Hood to Coast relay for the first time. In training for it, I had been following a generic schedule set up by an OHSU group. OHSU is one of the biggest medical universities and hospitals on the West Coast. On my last long run before I switched entirely to shorter runs multiple times during the day (which is like the relay), the schedule said something like 11 or 12 miles. If I am going to run that, I might as well run the 13.1 to make a half. Right? Very wrong. It was, unequivocally, the worst run I have ever had. By mile 11-ish, I thought I was going to black out. Not like, "Oh man this is hard! Why am I doing this?" but I was actually blacking out. My sight was blurring and spotty. If I tipped over like to rest my hands on my knees, I would have fallen over completely. Black out. I was not sure I could make it home. I stopped running. I walked the last couple miles home and was just happy to make it.
The next few days were very telling. I could not recover. I felt like I was in the midst of heavy fatigue again, and sever chemo brain. It was worrying me. I finally called my oncologist who had me come in the same day for a blood test. Surprisingly, the white blood cells were fine (for me) but I was two liters low on red blood. They just about ran me over to the hospital right then. Instead, they scheduled an infusion for the next day. We started running all kinds of tests to try to determine the cause of the red cell depletion. There are a few common causes, but none of them seemed to be the catalyst for me. Actually that's a good thing. Some of the common things were like the cancer spread to the bone marrow, or the blood produced by the marrow had mutated and the body was rejecting it. While getting a bone marrow sample done is less than pleasant, it is a necessity.
With the blood doping, I was given permission to still run H2C the next week. Mandy was not thrilled. But I did really well. Blood doping totally works. :)
It's been four months or so since then. Every time I have been tested, my blood has been holding, which is great. Seems it was a weird fluke, for the most part. But anytime I cannot shake being really tired, I get worried now. Recently, I cut out energy drinks. No more Rockstar, no more Amp. Let's be realistic though, there is still a lot of Diet Coke. One step at a time. But the last while I have been super tired and I have blamed it on the lack of Rockstar. But the results of the blood test show both red and white cells (and related things like neutrophils, etc.) were down again. They were lower than one month ago though higher than the two months prior. So the results were not bad enough to warrant additional tests, but still pay attention and do another CBC next month.
My worry comes in here. I have three more weeks before I go in, and on Christmas day I took a two and a half ish hour nap and still went to bed by 9:00pm. I slept for nine hours and was unhappy the alarm was going off. I could have slept more. Last night, Dec 26th, doing one of the shorter Insanity workouts I noticed I was pretty spacey. I am not liking the direction this may be heading. My running is stronger now than it has ever been. Not trying to push time, I did 10 miles and averaged 10 min 19 sec per mile. That is so much faster than I have been able to run that I am very excited to start working on speed. But the Spidey Sense is tingling about the tired. With three weeks before the next blood test, and maintenance dose of chemo, I guess I just keep an eye on it. Keep running. Keep doing Insanity.
...Wait and see.
And in the words of a Spaniard, "I hate waiting."
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