Shannon’s had a visit at the clinic, Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center, for her cell count check and a visit with the doctor. Dr Abuasab said everything is going as planned. He’s about to leave the country for 2 weeks to visit family in Jordan and Jerusalem, Israel. He introduced us to his Nurse Practitioner that will be covering while he’s out of town. She was very informative and had good bedside manner so we’ll be covered well while the doc is out of town.

Shannon mentioned to Dr. Abuasab that she had a scratchy sensation in her throat when she drank orange juice this morning. Dr Abuasab ordered a Covid swab for her. We went down to the 5th floor lab, she did the Covid swab and blood was drawn for her cell count check.

We got home and had a delivery on the front porch from the specialty pharmacy. It contained Shannon’s injections that help her make more white blood cells. We also received her oral targeted therapy drug. I’ll have to inject her daily until her counts come back up. Her White Blood Cells are low right now, which is expected. This is what puts her at greater risk of infection. The goal is to help her cell counts recover over the next week or two before starting the next chemo cycle. Then they’ll drop again. It’s going to be up and down line that. Dr Abuasab did say that over time her cell counts should recover faster as more of the cancerous cells are removed from the bone marrow and there’s a higher percentage of normal cells in the marrow.

Shannon also has 4 anti-infective drugs she has to take daily. There’s 2 antibiotics, 1 antifungal and 1 antiviral. The only issue is that we didn’t receive any of these in the delivery. I called our local Walgreens, and they did not have any prescriptions on file either. We had to make some phone calls to the specialty pharmacy and to the clinic. We aren’t sure what happened, but they were able to correct the issue and get the prescriptions sent to our local Walgreens. Shannon also got a new prescription for an antiviral drug to treat the Covid infection. We had to call three different pharmacies before we could find it in stock. Apparently, Covid is going around, so this drug is in high demand.

We also took our dogs, Sampson and Ruger, to the veterinarian to make sure they were up to date on their vaccinations. They both had ear infections for some unknown reasons. We are treating that issue. Neither had heartworms, no parasites, no other issues. Overall, they’re healthy and safe for Shannon to enjoy time with them. They’re part of her treatment too.