s Pdate 5/24/10

Since my appointment was so early at Duke (0830), we decided to go up the night before. As we got closer to NC, the weaker I felt. We stopped at the NC line at the rest stop and I almost past out. I knew as the week got longer, the weaker I felt and since my hemoglobin (red blood count) was like 8.0 and 12.0 is normal, I had either not eaten enough greens or was missing something in my diet. See, the chemo eats up the bad and the good cells so you have to really eat more than you usually do, but I haven't had much of an appetite. Anyway, contacted the Duke doctor on call and he advised me to go to the ER. We got there around 5 pm Sunday and got out at 10:00 p.m. then went to the hotel we booked. Only thing the ER did was a bunch of tests, and give me some potassium, since that was low. Advised my hemoglobin was 8.4 so it had gone up some. To make a long story short, I contacted my doctor the next morning and they immediately sent me up to chemo for 2 units of blood, which took 5 hours. Then the doctor wanted to see me as she heard I fell and hit my head....no, just almost passed out. Since I was feeling somewhat better, we decided to go ahead with my 2 chemo treatments and left at 6:30 last night. I do feel like I have a little more energy today, was able to wash one load of clothes, paid some bills, took a shower and picked up a few things. That's more than I've been able to do in a couple of weeks, praise the Lord! Thanks for the prayers, cards, emails and just for thinking about me. Love to all, Janice