The Story So Far

It's been twenty days since this hospital admission and it is now day fourteen post transplant; I thought it was time for a wee update. This has been a hard week for me - I say hard, but it is relative to the rest of the time for this admission which miraculously, has been  a walk in the park. I have had no major symptoms and haven't missed a meal, well apart from the time when they took me down for radiotherapy and they binned my meal because I wasn't on the ward, which I was kinda annoyed about because it was sticky toffee pudding for dessert which is my favourite. But never mind, right back to the plot. This week has been hard because I have been completely exhausted; I would sleep and it would make no difference. So I have spent most of this week asleep. It's funny, because I thought I had got away with it and then my hair started to fall out, really fast, So I decided to have my head shaved. Below are two pictures for your entertainment:

Thought I'd try a new style - hmm, maybe not

The finished product

In terms of the tiredness, I feel better now, but the smallest of movements take a significant amount of effort. I found also that I was getting muscular pain in my back and shoulder, but I am now being seen by the physiotherapists and things are improving. Strangely, I have developed symptoms on the palm of my hands and the sole of my feet. Don't worry its not hand, foot and mouth disease. Whenever pressure or heat are applied to them I get a burning sensation in my hands and feet, even though they themselves are not hot to touch or red. The docs call this type of pain neuropathic pain, which means that my nerves are a bit confused and are active, or firing, inappropriately which causes the sensation of burning pain. It should go eventually, but in the meantime its rather inconvenient because walking, washing hands, showering causes a decent amount of discomfort. But I have found ways to reduce the intensity, for example, double gloving when showering helps somewhat. There are pills that I can take, but I don't think that this current level of pain warrants medical intervention yet.  

From the blood result side of things, I had a bag of platelets, which help your blood clot, and I'm nearly at the level where I can get a blood transfusion - hopefully tomorrow. As an aside, blood transfusions are amazing! One minute you feeling faint and struggling to move without getting short of breath, and then two hours later you feel like you could do circuits; although granted, its hard to do when you are constantly attached to a drip stand. My neutrophils, or neutroblinkits as a child once called them which in my opinion is a much better name, have been steadily rising with the injection they have been giving me. They need to stay at 1 for two days without the injection. I was 0.78 yesterday but 0.73 today, so they are starting to stutter a bit. To be honest, the staff were quite shocked and how well they were rising, but now they are behaving as the would in a normal individual who has had this treatment.

So thats pretty much it. I think I'm going to have a nap know, my computer screen keeps going in and out of focus, may have overestimated my capacity slightly. That's one lesson I've learned/learning this week - pacing. For a go getter like me, this is quite hard. But I am thankful, I really feel like God has kept me in a protective bubble and has given me the resources to cope with acute illness if it comes. Each day that I wake up and I don't feel like death warmed up is a miracle for me, especially considering my previous hospital experiences. It just affirms to me that God cares about the little things. I can sleep easy knowing that He is on it.