So, it was a bit of a long couple of days hanging out at King's trying to ignore the huge needles, pumping machines and the desperate need to wee come the last hour of each session. Was there 9.5 hours on the first day but day 2 was blessedly shorter. Not helped by there being a different looper opposite me both days, being loud and one keen on showing off their bum crack at any given opportunity…
I didn't get as many stem cells as would have been ideal, but it wasn't a huge surprise given that I have now been on a chemo regime for 7 looooong years, 4 doses every weeks, month in, month out. Not great for stem cell vivacity apparently.
I got 1.6 million in total – and have 1.02 million in the bank from Jan 2017 when I last had this done. Parkside tend to use about 2 million for a transplant, the protocol at King's is ideally 4 million, so it's worryingly a bit short for that.
Parkside won't be an option if the time comes for a 3rd transplant unless something changes – given that my Prof is 84 this year and there seems to be no succession plan if he ever decides to hang up his face mask.
Was worried that the King's chap would say 'so given the numbers you can't have a 3rd transplant here' – but he was open to discussion on the phone. There are a couple of new things in the treatment armoury as and when I relapse next time, only one of which is another transplant. And he didn't explicitly rule out the 2.62m combined collections being too few to go ahead..He's going to look at a few factors (e.g. how many days it took for me to hit certain blood targets after the last transplant, how many cells I received in transplant 1 and 2 etc) and we'll speak again as and when things go to pot next time.
Good job it's actually cold enough for me to be wearing long sleeves, given the whopping bruise on my left forearm – but the others weren't as bad as they sometimes can be. Still a bit tired, but a lovely afternoon of Kantar spell checking has obviously revived me beautifully… (!)
Thank you for all the kind messages – you have no idea how much it means.
Sx