Visualization….
Early in my diagnosis, I remember sitting in the oncologists’ waiting area and I picked up a magazine that had an interview with a karate instructor who also had colon cancer. She described a variety of different activities she felt were helpful to her. In particular, she had said it was helpful to imagine that the her white blood cells were like PacMan, going around and gobbling up all the cancer cells. After a while, the karate instructor imagined her white blood cells were little karate guys “kicking cancer’s butt!” A couple of days earlier, I had someone else suggest that I should envision little PacMen going around my body and eating the cancer cells and all I could think is, “Do people really do that?”
I have been called many things in my life, but chief among them has been analytical (as in, “You are too analytical to believe in _____” or “You’re so damned analytical!” or simply, “You are SUCH a scientist!”). Apparently visualization works for many people, but I think, as with many of these kinds of ‘treatments,’ it is necessary for the person doing the visualization to believe in it; I don’t believe, so I do not think I’m a good candidate for it. I guess I’ll have to put my faith in the slash, burn, and poison methods of cancer treatment (in medical parlance that would be surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy).
Health update time: After a rough first couple of days, this week, the last couple of days have been pretty easy going. As I said previously, I felt much better on Wednesday after sleeping upwards of 12 hours on Tuesday. Today, I was very tired around 3p and ended up sleeping (hard) for a couple of hours. I did get the report of my labs this week. For those keeping score at home, my platelet count this week was 105 (with a normal range of 150-400). Last week, it was also low at 110, and I didn’t hear anything about it. My lymphocyte level was 5% (normal range 15-43) and my monocyte level was 16% (normal range 5-12). My doctors said my bloodwork looks okay, so these abnormal levels apparently are not enough to raise concern. I will follow-up with my oncologist (or my personal medical authority — my big Sister — who is a muckity-muck (a very technical medical term) nurse at CHOP).
Other than that, I am very much looking forward (as I believe I mentioned yesterday) to my brother and his son visiting tomorrow. My kids are looking forward to having their cousin visit and actually spent some time at the dinner table discussing (just short of arguing) about with whom their cousin will sleep. I think we’ll just put all three of the boys in one room and let them work it out.
Until next time…
Merle
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