My *$(@~% Liver

I went for chemo yesterday, my sister Mel came with me.  That was fun!  She's very busy and has a lot on her plate, so I was grateful she took the time to hang out with me.  💕 Things started out weird in that my blood work was never ordered, so I didn't get blood results for this week.  And we waited and waited for the chemo to come.  The infusion itself takes 1 ½ hours, but we were there 4 ½.  I also didn't get to see Dr. Prystas this week.  That's hard because sometimes I just need a pep talk!

Last night I got looking at my blood work from before.  A comprehensive work up has a long list of abbreviations that I don't understand.  Anytime something is listed "high", I find out what it is (google) so I can understand a little bit more about what might be happening.  AST (aspartate aminotranferase) and ALT (alanine transaminase) were both high on my most recent blood panel, so I looked up what they meant (deal with liver function).  High is bad, low is good.

I pulled up results from all previous blood panels, and compared them with my most recent. What I found wasn't terrific.  My very first panel listed ALT at 104, and AST at 77, which is high and bad because ... cancer in my liver!  Makes sense.  All subsequent blood work showed these enzymes way lower and in the normal range (Thank you chemo!).  My most recent blood work from last week - May 16th - showed the ALT going from 13 the previous week to 77 last week.  Bad.  The AST went from 15 the previous week or 43 last week.  Also bad.

Of course I'm looking at this late last night, so all I can do is wait until Monday to call my nurse.  I've been kind of a mess today, the lack of answers I need is excruciating.  Maybe these numbers won't amount to much, but until I know that for sure?  Torturous.  Why would they jump so high in one week?  What does it mean?  And what do we do about it?!  I'm praying there's a reasonable explanation for it.