Bah humbag – was meaning the next post to be a bit of the highlights of Christmas, but have just been failing day on day to summon the energy to whack a few words and some cherry photos on here.
Instead, right now I am perched on the end of my hospital bed n the London Clinic, determined to post an update as even I'm starting to lose the lot of where things are at, so you probably are too. (Actually, that's probably quite a nice place to be!)
The stem cell harvest has been much, much harder than expected. Hawksey had to start giving me 2 GCSF injections a day from 30th Dec, and their aim is to kickstart my white blood cells into mass producing stem cells. The downside is, your body starts to fill with extra cells and the pain is a bitch. So New Year's Eve was a tricky mix of me getting as much sleep as possible so I could actually be awake for midnight.
I then tipped up, with the lucky Janine, to the London Clinic on 3 Jan, to be attached to the magic stem cell machine for 4-5 hours, so they could be spun off. Sadly the first day's yield was completely pants – 400k cells only – and I need a minimum of 2 million for the transplant.
So I had to schlep all the way home, pack a bag and got admitted that night to the hottest hospital room ever. Cue a night of zero sleep, lots of fretting about whether my numbers would go up, sweaty neck and generally feeling incredibly miserable. Given doses 11 and 12 of GSCF – stomach by this point looking like a bruised slab of lard – and the all-important £6k single injection of Plerixafor at 11pm (cheers).
Day 2 – Much better, got 1.37m cells, but still not enough, so had to stay again last night and brace myself for doses 13 & 14 of GSCF at 6pm and another Plerixafor at 11pm. Different room, equally sweaty. You can tell this place gets a lot of Arab patients as the dinner menu has more babba ghanoush and hummus than you can shake a stick at.
Tried to walk the 150 yards round the corner onto Marylebone High Street with H to get a very quick breath of air and some easy supper, but my breathing is so poor, plus I am physically shattered, much worse than I've been in ages, that we had to turn back and eat in the room.
Unfortunately breakfast for me (arriving shortly) is very limited as you can't unplug from the harvesting machine once on it, so even the small glass of water that I've just dissolved the soluble paracetamol into, to try and manage the pain, worries me in case I need a pee later.. Cereal and milk therefore out, tea very tempting but a no. Had a bread roll with butter yesterday – till J rescued me with a non-watery M&S sausage roll.
Claire White in the visiting seat today – lucky, lucky, lucky – but at least it looks promising that the second P jab should stump up enough cells to make the transplant possible.
In the meantime I am caught in the conundrum of what to do this weekend. We are due on a train to Harrogate tomorrow morning to see our lovely friends David & Mandy. If the drugs go through my system, I may be back to semi-normal by Saturday so it would be good to go. However, given that I could barely walk last night, I'm not quite sure how getting me, a suitcase and the dog to Kings Cross could quite happen. Or whether foisting a not brilliantly well Scotty onto even super lovely friends is a good idea.
Will see how today goes. Maybe a sofa snooze at home and a bath will be enough to rally the Scotty body troops.
In the meantime, here's to over a million cells today, pretty please.
x