The heat is on

After a great week when Ranjan celebrated his 64th and had a relatively easy week after his second chemo, ate well and was in good spirits,  had a haircut, and felt good, the chemo was surreptitiously at work within his body, killing the good and the ugly. Yesterday was blood test day and looking at him I though: all is well. Imagine my fright when a cryptic SMS from the lab stating that the counts were out of limits and I should contact the doctor asap! The 15 minutes or so I took my chap to get the results were pure hell! What had happened! Well the cat was soon out of the bag as I got the result. His WBC had dipped to 1900 well below the minimum 4000 needed to fight any infection.

An SMS to his oncologist was promptly replied with the usual: wait and let us do another count on Monday and take it from there. He is scheduled for his next chemo on next Friday. So now we have less than a week to get is WBC to a 'respectable' 4000 so that the toxic brew can kill again.

So this week was as is said in medical parlance: a false positive! The darned chemo lulled us into a false sense of well being and made me forget for a bit that the battle was on, even if outwardly all seemed on track.So now I have 2 days to conjure a miracle with few tricks up my sleeve: food, jumping on the trampoline, my special brews and as much laughter as I can muster. There is a problem though and a big one that may make my task more difficult. Agastya my grandson leaves on Monday night and though everyone of us, specially Ranjan, are trying to put a brave face, some scary questions do fleetingly cross our minds. Keeping the WBC in these conditions is no easy task.

So my adversary won this round as it lulled me into a false sense of complacency. The war is still on with many battles to come. I am determined to win the next round and the war!