Friday 14 August 2015

D+22 - "The Long & Winding Road* "

I hope you enjoyed Karine's contribution to the blog a couple of days ago. I certainly learnt from it particularly how tough it has been for her and what it was like in the first few weeks. I was pretty much 'out of it' at that point so was not really understanding all that was going on. Perhaps we should have called her contribution "I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends (and Family)"!

Back to the here and now, thank you to everyone who has been emailing us, your support is so good to have especially for the morale of both of us. I am using the blog as a reply so apologies for not replying individually.

Alexi sent a text the other day commenting that the road to recovery doesn't seem to be much like a motorway. I'd settle for a quiet B road. To me it sometimes seems more like a cart track full of ruts and potholes. Every rut and pothole I fall into is a new symptom. Talking of the symptoms I have at present, none of them are anything serious thank goodness so each day is a day nearer to recovery and a battle won. Nevertheless the symptoms are an unruly lot. They don't wait in a nice orderly queue to replace the previous ones but come barging in whenever they please. To misquote Alan Bennett's The History Boys, when the Russell Tovey character is asked what is history he replies 'just one flipping thing after another'. That's how I feel much of the time about my current medical history!

I won't detail my day by day complaints, I find it boring telling Karine so I'm sure others would find it even more dull. I continue to go to haematology clinic twice a week which is pretty exhausting. It usually takes a day or two to recover. They take an armful of blood and review how I'm feeling. Quite often my medication needs changing. So far they seem pleased with my progress which I find very reassuring. However it is very frustrating feeling so grotty and tired all the time.

I bought a dosette box to organise my tablets but it was too small so I now have a huge one. I am currently taking somewhere between 150 and 170 tablets a week! All being well it should start to reduce a little quite soon but some of them I will be on for a year or more till my lymphocytes return and eventually I hope to be down to about 15 a week which I will stay on for life, quite literally,

Finally Lucy and Alexi are doing really well with their fundraising for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research thanks to your generosity. They've reached £1,671 and have reset their target to £2,000. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed.

Alexi & Lucy's JustGiving Page

*Beatles "Let It Be" track 10

2 comments:

Jane said...

I am enjoying your blogs. Is enjoying the right word? I find them a real education and they are so well written. You will become an expert of dossette box design as well as everything else! Keep writing and I hope each day you are beginning to feel a little less exhausted. Jx

Grace Pursall Ward said...

Hi David, it's Grace here from the Macmillan community and leoaftercancer.blogspot.co.uk. I am finding reading through your posts really interesting and thinking there must be something in this AML thing and blogging as we've both referenced The History Boys. Haha. It must be a very quotable play. You have done a much better job at documenting your experiences than I have, and my retrospective accounts seem to be failing me somewhat - your posts are reminding me of a lot of my own experiences which I am surprised that I had forgotten! Best wishes, you're doing great I promise.