Watching Paint Dry

This is like watching paint dry; Lin is going to have another blood test on Wednesday (2 days from now) and then if that still shows a low White Blood and Neutrophil count, we try again next Monday!


He had a scan on Friday and we were informed of the results today. Some coronary artery calcification and stones in both kidneys (we were only aware of one before). So he's heading to a cardiologist soon and we're keeping a watchful eye on the kidneys as they have not disturbed him thus far.


So far so good as far as the Big "C" is concerned. But it looks like we are going to expand our knowledge of various medical conditions before the year is out.


Prof. Wong has taken Lin's oxaliplatin dosage down to 60% (from 100% to 80%, then last time it was adjusted to 60%) but that doesn't seem to have made much change to the recovery rate of his WBCs. 


He's discussed this with colleagues and cancer specialists (including the one who invented oxaliplatin) and apparently low WBC counts are not uncommon in older patients on oxaliplatin. Something like 40% of older patients face this setback.


So next time around we are going to go to a two drug chemotherapy regime - 5FU and Leucovorin. The rationale behind this is that we should keep up the frequency or else there will be minimal effect.