Bad news: In order to have chemotherapy, you need to take a blood test two days prior to treatment to test for various things, not least of which is your white blood cell count. When I had my TCF treatment, they knew that I would possibly become neutropenic, and accordingly put me on 10 days of Neupogen to boost my counts. It works extremely well. However, on FOLFIRI, I was never put on Neupogen after treatment. What they expected was that since the treatment is much less adverse and that I am still relatively young (I think I have white hairs because of chemo, and not age) that I would not need any Neupogen. It's a pretty expensive drug, after all. I was originally supposed to have my second treatment on Wednesday, March 5 nearly a week ago. I failed the test (they don't like it when I put it that way, but it IS a failure), and had to push back treatment by one week.

And today, I learned that I failed the white blood cell test again. This means that treatment will be delayed by at least a week, probably happening on March 20. I am not happy about having treatment on a Thursday, but them's the breaks. Basically, the doctor made the wrong call in my treatment, and this is the result. My PET scan will need to be pushed back, and I may have to do a seventh treatment to make up for the month that I didn't have any. This also screws up my plans for summer school, sports, travel and pretty much anything I wanted to do in the spring.

Good news: I can now pretty much guarantee that I will make it out for Sunday with no problems whatsoever. For those that do not know, my tradition is to get to Hurley's at 9 am the day of the parade, eat the breakfast provided, drink the Irish coffee included, drink a couple of pints, go to the parade at noon and hang out on the south side of Crescent and Ste-Catherine (drinking), then go to some other bar or two and drink until around 7:30 pm. Of course I am not alone; I am with some core people, and I always either make new friends for the day, or encounter old ones. If you are interested, please let me know and we can make room for you at our table.