Well, today I had more blood work done and my Red count continues to go down. It seems that the Prednisone is not kicking in, or is just not working like it did before. The plan is to increase the Prednisone by 20mg to a level of 80 mg / day and to go down to La Jolla on Thursday and have another blood test and do a type and cross match for another blood transfusion. It will take about a day to find the correct blood (remember that I have difficult blood to match), and the plan is that I will go back down on Friday to have between 2 and 3 units of blood. The reason I am going back to La Jolla for this is that they have to give you the transfusion at the place they do the type and cross match. In La Jolla they can do the transfusion at the Infusion Center and I would be out at the latest by 7pm. If I did it up here they would have to admit me to the Hospital and I would have to wait for them to find the donor blood. The last two times I had it done up here I was in the hospital for 24 hours each time, and I got NO sleep. So even though it is a longer drive, it beats the inconvenience of being in the hospital for 24 hours.
Because they want to try to stop the Hemolyzing (killing off of) the red blood cells, they want me to come back down to La Jolla next week to get infused with IVIG, and with low dose Rituxan. Next week they will do this over two days, and then continue once a week for 3 weeks. The hope is that between the Prednisone, the IVIG and the Rituxan, this will stop the hemolyzing. After it is stopped then they will try to start on a therapy for the CLL, which would be sometime in June, assuming everything goes as planned.
The funny thing is that I am really not feeling that bad. I am playing golf, doing chores around the house, and not really very tired. So my body seems to be dealing with all of this pretty well, but I know I can't continue on this downward trend.
This is not exactly the way I would have mapped it out, but I am believing that this new course is the one that will get be back on track.
Terry
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