Diagnosis: Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). A Journey

For seven days, we braved the traffic and drove to and from Philadelphia for George’s infusions of Vidaza. He finished his last infusion yesterday and now he will continue taking the oral chemo, Venclexta until July 30th.

For the first time, George was nauseated and had dry heaves and vomiting after his treatment. This happened on Monday and then again Tuesday. He would be ok during the hour ride home and then, right when we arrived home, the nausea would start. He was given compazine prior to both of those infusions and it didn’t seem to do a thing. When he alerted his team, Dr. Loren checked with the pharmacy and was told that Zofran was the best anti-nausea med for Vidaza. So, they sent in the EKG machine before his Wednesday infusion and after looking a the results, approved him for the anti-nausea medication, Zofran. He has taken that many times before and we didn’t know why he wasn’t getting it this time. Turns out, it has something to do with the contraindication between Zofran and the Mirtazapine he takes. So, once they cleared him, he was given Zofran AND compazine before treatment and that did the trick!

He did relatively well during this cycle (aside from the nausea and vomiting). He did start having some swelling in his feet, ankles and calves. So yesterday, Tatyana came in and assessed him.

She said to keep an eye on it and let her know Thursday or Friday if the swelling doesn’t improve after stopping the chemo treatments and they may prescribe Lasix or something to take care of the excess fluid. She also recommended compression socks, which George bristled at. But I popped over to CVS to get him some and he pulled them on and is wearing them today while he works. We will see if they make a difference.

Now we just wait for George’s blood counts to drop from the chemo. His counts were already low when he started, so I’m not sure how much lower they can go. His white blood cell count was .8 yesterday and normal is between 4.5-11.

Next stop…..bone marrow biopsy on August 4th to see if this chemo knocked out the leukemia so he can move forward to bone marrow transplant #2.