Gawsh, what a week.

I am pretty sure that I have spent much of the past week studying. I had a midterm last Thursday, which I think went fairly well. Yesterday, I finally took my Human Infectious Diseases final exam. This was one of my classes from fall '06 in which I received an incomplete. Now it is completed, and only have one more incomplete to take care of. Whew. Sunday night, crazy girl that I am, I played flag football. I also decided it would be fine to cover the one girl who was actually good. She was running all over the place, and I got to tail her. I think I did a decent job, although I was exhausted by the end of the game. But I was running! And I didn't pass out! I am so happy that my body is finally coming back to life.

Speaking of my body pooping out on me, it has been two weeks since I last received chemo. Following protocol, today should have been my next - and last - encounter with the wicked drugs. But of course, it would be too easy for everything to go according to a set plan. I did not receive any chemo today. Once again, my white blood cell count was much too low to proceed. My neutrophil count (they are the first responders to infection) has actually plummeted from .97 to .18, and they need to be above 1.0 to continue. So next Wednesday I will go in for labs, but we aren't expecting my counts to be high enough until at least two weeks from today, if not longer. Of course I am disappointed, especially as this now means that I am neutropenic again. My immune system won't be able to combat any nasty little bacteria that decide to invade my system. Due to the nature of city-living, unfortunately, bacteria are nearly impossible to avoid. The trains and buses are crawling with germies, as are just about all public places. So while I am not going to restrict myself to my room for the next two weeks, I do need to be overly careful of crowds and such. Do not, however, believe that this will hinder me in any way from trying to find various Halloween parties this weekend; it will not. Regardless of my susceptibility to everything, the show must go on.

Today was good for one thing though: I met with a nutritionist at Dana-Farber, and I now know what I should be eating. She told me that cancer patients' protein needs increase, which I did not know, and she gave me an extensive list and explanation of foods high in protein. She also gave me a sheet that listed "Phytonutrient rich foods." I have since learned that phytonutrients essentially make up most plants' immune systems. The immune systems of plants have beneficial properties for humans as well, so I will be eating more of my leafy greens, red peppers, squash, apples, blueberries, apricots, papaya... The list goes on. I am definitely excited to go shopping now. Go Guava!

Generally, I am exhausted. It is not bad, because it means I am busy and getting things done, but I am still exhausted. I can not believe that November is in one week; this year is going by so quickly. Well, this school year. The rest of the year rather dragged. The important thing is that I am in a good place right now, even though I still have chemo looming, somewhere in the near or distant future. So even though I am super tired, this is the type of tired that can be solved by sleeping in one day, as opposed to the other type of tired that can only be solved by the transfusion of blood products. Life is definitely getting back to normal, whatever normal is anymore. Alright, enjoy the end of the week. Peace.