Next Steps

I went to California yesterday to go to the doctor with Adrienne to discuss next steps. She looked really gray early in the morning but perked up as the day went on and she ate a couple of good meals. Her blood counts were pretty good, not perfect, but much improved and she is regaining some strength. Hopefully things will go back to normal over the next few weeks as her body recovers from the chemo. As soon as the AKT inhibitor trial is ready, she will start that. It is just waiting for review board approval so it will be available when Adrienne is ready to start in about five weeks. If she responds to that, great. If not, she'll go on another trial with a drug called LBH569 (an HDAC inhibitor) combined with an mTOR inhibitor. We expressed our concern about doing a trial in its very early days but her doctor wants to start her on the lowest dose since she's had so much prior treatment. There's no question that she's much more apt to get side effects and we don't want to do anything to further injure her bone marrow, as that would be catastrophic. Adrienne will get a quick checkup in two weeks and then will have three weeks off from doctors. YYYEEEAAAHHH!

I signed up to donate blood yesterday. I've never been able to give before because I was severely anemic but a hysterectomy solved that problem. I showed up yesterday, filled out multiple forms, got a a satisfactory check by the nurse, and was ready to go. The nurse checked my left arm: no good veins. Then she checked by right arm: one vein looked good, a little questionable, but we hoped it would work. The needle they use is HUGE and the vein blew as soon as inserted the needle. First, the blood welled up under the skin and before she could catch it, it was splurting all over the place. Needless to say, they don't want me as a donor and I have a big, colorful bruise all around the area. Hopefully I'll get to help in another way with a bone marrow donation but my days as a blood donor came and went before I knew it. (Okay, it wasn't too much fun at the time but I can laugh about it this morning even though I'm disappointed.)