Today ended up being a really, really tough day.  It started fine with lots of lying around.  By cleverly staying horizontal Maggie avoided any gastro-intestinal events (a.k.a. “puking”).  However, as the day crawled on she felt increasingly worse.  Around 2-ish, at my insistence, we wandered out for some simple errands but quickly realized that our intent far outweighed our ability.  Driving around in the car proved too much for the gastro-intestinal system.  🙁  From that point it was a quick, easy downhill slide…  From 3PM onward the day was spent lying listless on the couch barely breathing, feeling miserable while Chris tried, in vain, to get her to eat.  It was a tough day – a very tough day.

Around 6PM Chris realized that Maggie was running a fever of about 100° (from 99.9° to 100.5°).  Chris first called Nurse Jolie who masterfully calmed Chris’s fears by telling him that while careful watch is necessitated, panic is not and that if the fever persists for hours to contact the on-call doctor.  So Chris panicked and immediately called the on-call doctor.  The doctor said that because her white blood cell counts were reasonably high enough on Monday to administer the chemo treatment he believed it would be unlikely that her cell counts would be so drastically diminished that this would constitute a crisis (whereas if she were possibly neutropenic such a fever should immediately result in a trip to the emergency room.)  Following that logic he believed that her slight fever was not “a crisis.”  He recommended Tylenol and bed rest.  However, he did state that if the fever continued in the morning that we come in to The Spa.  Of course, that means a trip to Austin and two more missed classes.  Chris is betting that we’ll be in Austin by noon on Thursday.

The administration of the $7,000 injection of Neulasta went perfectly smooth Tuesday night thanks to the assistance of one of Maggie’s classmates, Jana, who helped coax a frightened, fumbling Chris out of the corner to teach him all about giving shots.  Maggie even said it was basically painless.  Of course, it still gives us heartburn to know that we threw away $2,000 worth of medication just because the shot comes pre-packaged in a 6mg form factor but Maggie only could use 4mgs.  Poof!  $2,000 down the toilet.  Thank you, Amgen Chemical company.