May Treatment.. and more..

 Written by Dawn and Alyssa.

This has been a busy start to the week for Mom, with labs and an appointment with Dr. A on Monday, followed by Immunotherapy treatment on Tuesday. 


Monday’s appointment with Dr. A was fairly uneventful. He was happy with her lab results so far and with how active Mom has been. She’s been meeting her 6,000/day step goals, which is impressive for her! She always tries to hit that goal, but she wants you to know that some days she doesn’t make it, or she struggles to do so.


Tuesday ended up being a busier day than expected. Before leaving for treatment, Mom received a call from Dr. A. He had forgotten to mention at Monday’s appointment that he would like to set Mom up for a stem cell collection to store the cells until she needs them. This is something that has been casually talked about happening “at some point” but that's about as far as that planning has ever gone. This was initially abandoned in 2021 due to mom’s heart damage, but it has been talked about as something that “could” happen at some point since then. So the plan is now to collect the stem cells in July and store them so they are available when she needs them for a transplant later on.  She will be admitted to Juravinski for 1-3 days for the retrieval process. 


So, that was a bit of a whirlwind for Mom to learn on the morning of treatment! Then the same morning, the hospital called to see if Mom could come to the clinic to have her veins assessed for the collection procedure. So off Mom and Dad went to the cancer clinic for treatment and then to another clinic for her vein assessment. 


The cancer clinic was very busy and had fallen behind schedule, so Mom and Dad had to wait for a bit before she was able to get her treatment. Thankfully, the treatment went well and was uneventful. This was Mom’s first time having immunotherapy without her “dex”(steroid), which is supposed to help her to not have a reaction to her treatment. This was part of the plan, as Dr. A wanted to start weaning her off it. Thankfully, she didn’t have any reactions to her treatment. 


After treatment, they headed over to the clinic to have Mom’s veins assessed. This consisted of two nurses who each looked over the veins in each of Mom’s arms and then swapped sides. Both nurses concluded that no, Mom’s veins aren’t big enough for the procedure. This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have good veins, and even the nurses emphasized this, but it means that they won’t work for this particular procedure because the needle is larger than usual (when the nurse began to explain this, then Mom told her that she wasn’t sure how much more info she wanted!). They will have to collect the stem cells through a catheter from either her neck or elsewhere. 


Once they got home Mom went straight to bed to rest. Busy days like these still make her quite tired, and tiredness is still one of the number one side effects of her treatment. 


Since then, Mom has received several more appointment dates for various aspects of the stem cell retrieval process, and all of a sudden her once-a-month treatments now have many additional appointments. This has all kind of come up quite suddenly for us as we weren’t expecting this to be part of our summer plans, but we have peace about it all and are thankful yet again that there is an opportunity for her to fight this disease!


Thank you for your continued prayers, notes and words of encouragement.


Prayer Requests:

  1. For strength for Mom as she continues to experience tiredness from treatments.

  2. For the doctors and medical staff as they prepare for the stem cell retrieval process. 

  3. Praise God that Mom’s heart numbers have been the best they have been since diagnoses. 


“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10


The "problem" proteins


Heart protein number

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