Friday's injection went smoothly. Perhaps the smoothest yet. Karen still got some flu like symptoms, but it didn't seem to be much more than that bleh feeling you get when you're sick. The difference between the first shot and this last one is huge. The thing we're wondering now is how rough the injection will be after our week off.
We had more testing done Thursday, which mirrored the testing we had the day after the first injection. A lot of these blood samples taken go directly to the researchers, and we never see their results. None of the test results from Wednesday or Thursday were available to us. We were hoping one of Friday's tests would at least give us Karen's white blood cell count so we'd know how careful to be on our week off, but that didn't turn out to be the case. We even went as far as asking if they could do a blood test that would tell us the white blood cell count, but no one wanted to run one. The researcher working with Mayo said we should expect the white blood cell count to rebound quickly, and that he didn't think the drop was necessarily from the injections. The oncologist said the opposite; there's no reason to expect different results Friday than we got Monday, as nothing had changed, and to just follow the usual precautions for a low neutrophil count: wear a mask when visiting family, avoid crowded public locations, and wash your hands frequently.
