Home again a week last Thursday the 7th after 10 days in the City Hospital - hooray!
My Hb has risen to 13 and stayed there for at least a week, this is a rise of about 30% in the last 7 weeks or so - thanks to the Erythropoetin ('Epo' to various athletes in years gone by)! The problem is that the platelets have dropped to below 50 and I keep getting small bruises appearing. We saw Prof in clinic two days ago and the Epo has been stopped because sometimes as the Hb rises the platelets fall - a sort of seesaw relationship. I'm not too sure why this should be but it means a return visit to clinic next week to check that the platelets haven't fallen any further. So much for going onto two weekly visits!
My weight has crept back up to the pre-septicaemia levels of early March - about 4-5kg below my pre-leukaemia weight. Last weekend it was brought home rather forcibly that this represents 4-5kg of not just any old tissue or whatever but loss of muscle. Karine and I were in a local park with Charlotte and Stewart and their two girls, Bethany and Eden.
There is an outdoor gym and Stew jumped up on to a high bar and did a few pull ups. I'm a little taller than him and thought I could do the same, some hope! I could nearly reach the bar whilst standing on the ground but couldn't even jump the couple of inches needed to reach it. I hung from a slightly lower bar next door but couldn't begin to do any pull ups at all. It's going to take a lot more work and time to get back to anything like the pre-leukaemia level of rather modest fitness! They tell you it will take about two years to recover from the chemotherapy and the transplant - sadly it seems they were right. :-( So, it's back to the exercise bike, upper body exercises and weekly visits to the hospital gym - walking on the level just isn't enough.
* Eric Clapton - "461 Ocean Boulevard" - track 2
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