Back to the beginning.

It's been a difficult few weeks here.  Andrew has been feeling generally terrible on the new oral chemo regimen.  He really wasn't able to get out of bed at all during last week, and he was having increasing pain. We decided it was time to call Dr. W and get a CBC to see if he needed some blood support. The CBC showed that A's platelets were low so Dr. W ordered a transfusion for the next morning.

The pain became unbearable that night and Andrew couldn't sleep a wink, so we went for the transfusion, and then I called Dr. Z's office to let them know what was going on. After a while, his nurse called me back and said that Dr. Z. wanted us to come right away to the Urgent Care at MSK, and that Andrew would most likely be admitted. So we drove down last night, and Andrew was admitted around midnight.  The doctors say that he has very high levels of calcium, which have been increasing since September. They don't believe that the chemo drugs caused the calcium spike, but that it's caused by the lymphoma. This happened to Andrew once before, at the beginning of this whole ordeal. I had to look back into the blog to find it -- right before he was due to start his very first chemo treatment, he had a calcium spike from the widespread lymphoma which led to his 5-week hospital admission. So now we have arrived right back at the beginning.

Dr. Z. is away at a conference until Wednesday, so I'm not really sure what is going to happen next. They're giving him drugs and fluids to get the calcium down, and then hopefully he will be able to come home. I don't know yet if he will be getting his treatment as planned on Tuesday, or if they will change course.