Velcade Cycle 5... day 4

With my waiting room knitting.

This is the sleeve of my Modern Garden cardi being knitted on spectra acrylic Knitpro dpns. Terrifying prismatic surgical-looking instruments! I wish I wasn't in the habit of stabbing my needle sharply against my sternum to push the stitches along... it could be a dangerous business with these needles! Eek!

But I digress...

We saw a Doctor at the Haematology clinic today- the Italian lady. She didn't know why FL had been told to see a Doctor. He explained about the constipation / weakness / sickness/ depression which had led to the cancellation of Monday's Velcade infusion. She looked at the computer and confirmed that his 21 December FreeLite kappa/lamda ratio was down to 1.2: "practically normal". (Last week's Consultant told us not to measure the ratio but the difference between the two numbers... sigh!). She examined his abdomen - fine. No blockages.

"So... there is no reason to stop the Velcade!"she declared. FL protested. (I was so proud!) And the Doctor reiterated the revised advised procedure to aim for 8 cycles for patients showing a good response. Which we knew about from my scourings of the web. FL asked what to do about the constipation. "Eat lots of fruit and veg, drink plenty of water, and take laxatives if you miss a single poo." FL explained he was doing all that. She shrugged (very nicely, but it was still a shrug) "That is part of the treatment - you get the constipation and the peripheral neuropathy." Gee thanks! But then she added "If the peripheral neuropathy gets worse we can reduce the dose in the next cycle." So that's something I suppose...

So today FL received his final dose of Velcade for Cycle 5. They are just going to omit the dose he missed on Monday and carry on with the planned regime... to Cycle 8. 8! I am just doing my sums and that means he will have a week to recover from Cycle 8 before we go on holiday. Crikey, that's cutting it fine!