Thursday 15 December 2016

R+36 - "The Boy in the Bubble" *

No temperature for nearly three days now so perhaps the infection has gone. Each episode seemed as though it would never end and made me feel that this was not a life worth living. Then the fever would start to subside, the horrible shaking would settle and the other symptoms such as no saliva would resolve themselves, life would start to take on some colour again and the future would make an appearance once more.

If everything goes well the IV antibiotics will stop later today. No bug has been found for all this palaver which means the treatment has been empirical.

I am sustained by regular transfusions of blood and platelets and will need some more in the next day or so. As for going home, perhaps by the end of the weekend if I'm lucky.

I still have no neutrophil white cells so am not sure when I can start the second round of chemotherapy. This is likely to make me worse again as it upsets the graft cells whilst hopefully pushing back the leukaemia, more fun and interesting times ahead!

Karine brings food in twice daily for which I'm extremely grateful. That and the regular visits from her and Charlotte do more for my quality of life than anything else, oh apart from paracetamol when I'm spiking a temperature!!!

Once home the risk of infection is the big danger as before. I think I will need to wear a mask when leaving the house like those tourists one sees, they can't all have neutropenia can they?  Karine is threatening to put me in a glass bubble.

Later today we meet professor emeritus John Fletcher - after whom the transplant ward is named - and finally present the cheque from the walk in Derbyshire in September, £1,670.  Lucy and Mike my sister and brother-in-law as chief instigators, organisers and leaders of the walk will be there too,

Paul Simon - Graceland, track 1

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