Kicking off from where I left off on my last entry, July went as planned with treatment and as normal we tried to get out and about for walks etc, aside from it got very warm, then I was sat inside with curtains closed and fans on to keep cool.
August however was full of fun around my treatment, I had my bloods as usual on the Monday morning but on the Tuesday I received a call from the chemo ward nurses to advise that my treatment would need to be delayed by a week due to my platelets count dropping significantly to 61 (normally I am around the upper ends of 150 to lower ends 170), the nurse asked if I had noticed any bleeding or bruising but I'd not had anything. Due to me having no obvious signs of why the platelets would’ve dropped so much the nurse messaged the oncologist to see if the oncologist would want to see me or do anything. Tuesday lunchtime the ward called again to advise that the oncologist wanted me to proceed with treatment on the Wednesday but that they wanted me to have another blood test, so we quickly dashed off for me to have a second blood test. When I went in for treatment on the Wednesday (delayed by an hour due to my treatment not arriving on time with the fun with my bloods) I was advised that my platelets reading was now 176 from the blood test the day before. I asked if there was a reason it could have jumped from 61 to 176 in 24 hours and the nurse could only see a note on the system that questioned if the reading of 61 had “clumped”.
How I felt during this 24 hour period was firstly very frustrated at having the delay (after the initial call on the Tuesday morning), because on the one hand a delay has repercussions for plans we’d made going forward in the year but also because, as silly as this sounds, it acted as a reminder that I’m going through cancer treatment. See said it sounds silly, but with things going smoothly I had got used to it and in an odd way it felt normal going for treatment etc and having it as part of my routine, but with something going wrong, it just puts thing out of sync and reminds me how ill I am. Then when I was going ahead with treatment thinking I had a platelet reading of 61 I was honestly pretty nervous as I was wondering how safe it would be having treatment if something was pretty wrong with me. Finally having treatment and finding out the reading was now 176 I was wondering if the lab knew my Monday blood sample had “clumped” because surely they wouldn’t report a reading of 61 and caused the unnecessary stress. I have no complaints about the nurses, they obviously have to contact me when they see something change like that to check I am okay and they also should cancel my treatment unless the oncologist says otherwise, I feel sorry for the nurses having to be on the frontline dealing with patients for things like this as I can well imagine some people may kick off at them (I’d like to point out I didn’t kick off, I’m a delight 
but I can well imagine people would). So yes, August’s treatment was different and a little bit stressful.
September treatment wise went smoothly and we had a nice little break away. However October I had a bit of fun at the end of the month where I noticed some bruising on my lower right abdomen which I couldn’t explain where it had come from. I contacted the nursing team and was advised to have an emergency blood test to check my platelets just in case the bruising was a sign that I had an issue. Thankfully the results came back as stable, but it was nice mad dash around to have on a Friday.
Also in October I had an oncology appointment which was fine just being a normal catch up and getting a scan booked, however I came out of the appointment with the impression that the oncologist was considering stopping my treatment as I had hit the 2 year mark (to explain this briefly, when I first started on Nivolumab the rules were that after 2 years the treatment stops, however these have now changed to if the treatment is still beneficial & both me the patient and the oncologist are happy to continue, then you can continue). But with this impression I wasn’t sure how I felt about this and if I’m honest I was getting quite stressed about it as I didn’t know what coming off treatment would mean for me both physically and mentally. To round off October I had a solid medical week kicked off by bloods on a Monday, Tuesday scan, Wednesday was treatment and the Thursday was my covid booster and flu jabs day.
7th November was my oncology appointment, so I may have been stewing for 4 weeks wondering what was going to happen with me, thankfully it was a massive weight off my shoulders being told firstly that the scan showed everything was stable, again like the last scan no shrinkage but no new growths. Based on this the oncologist was happy for me to carry on with treatment as before providing I was happy to stay on it, which I am as compared to chemotherapy I am in a much better place and I feel able to do things admittedly I am still cautious about things and I won’t be running down to football matches or gigs anytime soon to be surrounded by loads of people, but I am still getting out for walks and managing to do things. The plan going forward now is to see oncology again in 3 months and then likely have another scan in 6 months time.
