It all went to plan in the end and we arrived back in the middle of the afternoon. Today I'm feeling slightly strange again, not suprisingly, but sufficiently motivated to do a bit of research into the abbreviations in my chemo passport and to find out how my blood test results relate to the norm. Unfortunately the magnesium results are not in the booklet so I can't see what happened there.
Hb signifying Haemoglobin shows that my level was slightly lower than the norm before I had my first course - that's something I'm surprised about given the diet I'd been following. It's down a tad again even after the spinach and liver. WBC indicates White Blood Cells and I was in the normal range both last time and this. Plts stands for Platelets and I'm doing well with those. Neutrophils are apparently the most common type of white blood cell making up about 50-70% of all white blood cells. They can ingest other cells though they do not survive the act and are the first immune cells to arrive at a site of infection. These were not measured before my first dose, but are well within the normal range now. So I guess it's more spinach and liver and perhaps a nice steak in a few days when the danger of sickness has passed.
For those of you who were wondering about the pink folders, I asked the question yesterday. They have a range of different colours, and yes, nice nurse Sue told me that she does save the vivid pink ones for the girls!
*Title of a wonderful song recorded by the Living Archive Band
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