Superbowl - Game Time is Pain Time

It has been a few days since either of us has posted anything on the blog. We know that you read our entries because you care how we are doing and we appreciate that more than you will every know. That makes it very easy to talk about the good times and very hard to share the tough ones.

After a round of chemotherapy your white blood cell count falls to almost zero. This is called your neutropenic period and it last for 5-7 days. This leaves you wide open to any infection and if you are lucky enough to catch anything it will land you in the hospital. To help with this Dr. Bernstein's office gives you a Neulasta shot. This stimulates the marrow in your bones to produce white blood cells very fast and limits your neutropenic period to about 2 days. The downside is that your bones hurt.

Meredith started hurting during the Superbowl so we left early to go soak in Nathan's hot-tub. It helped temporarily, but when we got home she was in tears with pain. After a call to the on-call doctor, 3 doses of morphine, 4 doses of Ibuprofen, and 2 of Tylenol Meredith was still in pain. Wow. Nothing reminds you of how human you are than holding someone that you love and not be able to take away their pain. She finally fell asleep and the pain has been going away since then. Yesterday and today she has felt great and has had a great amount of energy (and spunk).

A few happy notes...
We spent Saturday morning in Molalla with my grandparents. When we left we stopped by Big Burger and got Meredith a giant soft-serve cone which she thoroughly enjoyed.AND
Meredith started packing today for a sunny get away to Palm Springs. The further into the medical process we get the more Meredith has wanted to get away from it all for a few days. So we are going to spend a week down south with the party crew (G&G Hall, Uncle Carl and Aunt Jean) ...and the blessings keep coming.