1 Down, 17 To Go

Last night I took my last Keppra pill. Keppra is the one that was helping me not have seizures; the fact that Dr. Jason deemed a new prescription unnecessary when the refills ran out seems like a good thing to me. I haven't had a new brain MRI yet, but I will in about two weeks. With Keppra gone, my medicine list now reads as follows:

Primary Therapies:

Weekly:

1. Herceptin: Engineered antibody, for Her2NEU positive cancers.

2. Taxol: Traditional chemo, made from yew trees

3. Navelbine: Traditional chemo

Monthly:

4. Pamidronate: For bone density

5. Lupron: To block ovarian function (keep estrogen down)

Premeds, so I tolerate Primary Therapies:

Weekly:

6. Dexamethazone: Keeps me from feeling like I have the flu with Taxol

7. Zofran: Blocks nausea

8. Ranitidine: Blocks stomach acid

9. Benadryl: Keeps me from having an allergic reaction to Taxol (also makes me LOOPY)

Things I am taking to counteract side effects:

3 times/day:

10. Glutamine powder: to assuage neuropathy, which makes my fingers and toes tingly and a little painful

11. Vitamin B-6: Same as glutamine

1 time/day

12. Bactrim: Sulfa antibiotic as a prophylactic against a pneumonia recurrence

13. Protonix: Keeps stomach acid down

5 times/week

14. Neupogen: The shot I give myself to boost white cell production

Weekly:

15. Epotin: Given at the clinic to boost red cell production

Meds for Specific, Finite issues

Daily

16. Fluconazole: 10 days, for a relapse of thrush (probably brought on by the juice I was drinking 3Xday with my glutamine. I have started mixing the glutamine just with water, which is gross, but less gross than a throat full of scales I can feel when I swallow)

Weekly

17. Iron Sucrose: 4 times, to help my blood accept the Epotin to build more red cells. It looks like coffee in the drip bag. That is, it looks like the coffee I make. It looks like a double espresso. Fortunately, it didn't feel like that.