Round 14 delayed

As the CT scan got delayed the doctors said I would continue the usual three weeks chemo cycle. I was supposed to start round 14 yesterday, but a nurse from the hospital called me up and said that the Platelet count in Friday's blood sample was too low to start chemo. Platelets have an important role in stopping bleeding. A normal value is between 150 and 360 and mine was 88. This is a typical side effect of chemotherapy and though my value has usually been on the lower end of the scale it has never dropped below 100. The nurse said the doctor had ordered a one week delay in starting the chemo. Next Monday I'll have to give another blood sample before hopefully getting chemo on Tuesday.

The other blood values were fine from the point of view that I'm a cancer patient. They also took the CEA value which had gone up to 179,8 (it was 108,9 on Feb 22nd). I got a little worried about this as it could indicate that tumours have started growing. The nurse said CEA is always used together with the pictures from the CT scan and that CEA could go up and down for other reasons as well. I'll simply have to wait for another two weeks until the CT is done and pictures are analysed.

In the evening I went orienteering and ended up as number 42 out of 150 on a 4km track. I came out of the woods with a face shining like a red light bulb. Next time I have to force myself to walk not to run through the woods.