His hemoglobin is also low, but just over the number that would mean a transfusion.
His white blood cell count is low - that means he's back to needing to avoid company and crowds again.
Terri feels confident that these numbers will come back up, just like they did last time. We just have to wait on his body to recover from the chemo and radiation. By they way, we sure do love Terri. She's the nurse practitioner, which is just one notch under our main doctor. She's the whole package - brilliant, kind, sweet, funny, and upbeat. She calls Rudy, "Uncle Rudy". He LOVES that! She gives him a big, from-the-heart hug every time she sees us.
This is not a good photo of Terri. It doesn't even come close to capturing her vivacious personality. She's forever in our hearts.
Rudy's appetite isn't all that great, but it's not as bad as it has been. He's eating. Not much of what he wants is healthy, but at this point, I'm just happy to see him eating anything at all. He weighs 168 now. So what is he eating? He wants pizza and cinnamon rolls. I would never have guessed he'd enjoy the pizza because he's not liking anything spicy. I should know better than to try to make sense of any of this. Just when I think I have ANYTHING figured out, something happens to let me know that I'll likely never figure out anything at all.
The one thing he is enjoying that is on his list of things he's encouraged to have - beet and apple juice. It's a bit of trouble to make. I thought we could take the easy way out and mix the bottled beet juice with bottled organic apple juice. It tasted good to me. Nope. He prefers the fresh. There'll be no shortcuts, I guess.
More Misc. News -
This photo was on our nieces Facebook page. Abby wore a Team Rudy bracelet when she ran a race recently.
Another niece, Sarah, made Rudy the most wonderful cupcakes last weekend. I CANNOT believe that I forgot to take a photo of them. They were so pretty and colorful, all decorated for Easter. Sarah is getting so tall. Sarah is a niece on my side of the family. Abby is from Rudy's side. Both of them are tall and look like models. We have a lot of fabulous nieces and nephews. Best of all, they are all really good people. We are so proud of them all.
We had two wonderful visits this weekend. First, our long time friend, Doyle came by. It was so good to see him. Doyle and Rudy have been friends since high school.
Next, Rudy's Aunt Jane stopped by. She lives in Buford, but had come down to Senoia with a friend, so of course she couldn't be this close without seeing us.
It was a wonderful day and really great to see everybody, but Rudy was pretty worn out afterwards. Happy, but worn out.
Again, I wasn't thinking and didn't take any photos.
On the other hand, one day last week, I took a million photos of one of our kitties who was being particularly snuggly. This is Sissy -
Sissy thinks she's a baby and likes to be held like one, too. She's incredibly smart and very high maintenance.
As for me, I'm still going. I can handle the big important things pretty well, but the stupid, little things are getting to me. I feel like I'm drowning. I haven't had a pity party in a while, but I think I'm heading for one. I keep crying over totally ridiculous things. Yesterday, it was a commercial. Like I said, it's totally ridiculous. I think I'm going to try hard to have a little fun the next couple of days (while force feeding Rudy nutritious foods).
By the way, if anyone wants to bring Rudy some tasty leftovers to eat, let me know! I'm not having much luck getting him to eat my cooking. Don't bring much - he may not eat it and I won't be able to eat it since I have to stay on a pretty strict diet to keep my IBS issues under control. I wish I had a cook... and a housekeeper... and I might as well wish for a gardener and handyman, while I'm at it.
OH OH OH - speaking of handy
