Chemo 1
11/23/2021 - 12/8/2021
ROUND 1 / INDUCTION: After diagnosis, Ian was admitted to our local hospital to be begin the standard course of treatment: 7+3 induction therapy. It is an intensive chemo given by IV for 7 days, aiming to kills the Leukemia blast cells in the marrow. AML is so aggressive that every day counts, so there is no time to research hospitals or treatments. You go where you are and take what they give you. Fortunately, Greenville Memorial (Prisma) has a nice new blood cancer wing and Ian’s room was four stars! With a Roku stick in-hand, Ian checked in for what he thought would be 30 days. He would miss Thanksgiving at the farm, but expected to be home for Christmas. He could have one visitor per day, which would be me (besides a cameo from Eli, bearing a turkey dinner!). As the chemo started to drip, he waited and waited for the side effects. “What’s the big deal?” he thought for the first two weeks, as he rode the exercise bike, ate burgers and watched Netflix. And then, the fevers hit - putting him on a terrifying roller coaster of shivers and sweats, along with shooting head-pains. And with the fevers, came the gamut of tests and a cocktail of anti-everything medicines, because any infection could be life threatening. But with no source of infection found, it was deemed febrile neutropenia - which is a fancy way of saying there is a fever of unknown origin and no white cells are present to fight it. After about 5 days the fever subsided, leaving Ian exhausted, and both of us relieved. We were still scared, but he was out of the woods for now. Next up was a bone marrow biopsy to see how effective the chemo was by counting how many Leukemia blasts were still in the marrow. We anxiously awaited the news with hope and positivity, only to be crushed when the doc reported that 60% of his blood cells were blasts. Sure it was an improvement from 80%, but since the goal was 0-5%, it meant that this round of chemo was somewhat of a bust. We were devastated. So what next?
