Treatments begin...

I did some digging and found my Mom's daily journal entries from my days in the hospital. It should be more helpful to put the pieces together now.

    When the blood test results came back, my platelets were extremely low. 32 to be exact. A normal person usually has between 120 to 400. This would explain the massive bruise on my thigh that I discussed in my previous post. For those of you that don't know, your platelets are the component of blood that helps in clotting. Something needed to be done about this so I began receiving platelet and plasma transfusions right away.
    On August 3rd, my third day in the hospital, bone marrow biopsy results came back and confirmed the original APL diagnosis. Just so you know, a bone marrow biopsy is very painful. I will give you a brief overview of what it is... you drill a large needle into your hip bone in the back, take a syringe and draw out bone marrow from the bone and send it away to the lab for testing. Anyone's knees weak yet? Luckily I was heavily sedated for this procedure...this time.
    My third day in the hospital is when my chemo treatments began. I was having 3 different types being given to me at this time. I must have been really sick. The first was Cytarabine, the second was Daunorubicin, the third, All-Trans Retinoic Acid (ATRA).
    I will talk about the ATRA. My body and ATRA were not friends. There are many side effects of ATRA: headache, fever, bone pain, nausea and vomiting, rash, mouth sores, itching, sweating, eyesight changes, flu-like symptoms, bleeding problems, infections, pain (bone and joint pain, chest discomfort). The following are less common side effects (occurring in 10-29%) for patients receiving ATRA: heart rate irregularities, poor appetite, weight loss, diarrhea, dizziness, high blood pressure, low blood pressure, insomnia. A very serious side effect is APL differentiation syndrome. This syndrome is a reaction between the drug and the leukemia. This syndrome produces fever, difficulty breathing, weight gain, lung and heart problems. You will come to see in further posts that I had every one of these side effects!