So tomorrow is the big day. I have been informed that the donor cells are due to arrive at either 13:30 or 17:30 tomorrow, depending on whether the donor required one or two sessions on the stem cell extraction machine to get the necessary quantity to fill me up. The cells will arrive in a bag, be administered like a blood transfusion and will be over in an hour. And basically nothing happens. I should become neutropenic at the end of this week, meaning I will not be allowed off the ward, and then it is a wait of 1-2 weeks to see if the donor stem cells can start to generate blood cells for me. Once they do, I go home. It is months down the line before issues of Graft-versus-Host start to become significant.
After spending 22 hours on a drip from 11am yesterday morning until 9am this morning I managed to get out today and go for a big long walk round the park in the sun, which was nice. Got a bit hot and sweaty though and really needed a wee for a large part of it, but it was good to get out while my neutrophil count is still around 4 point something.
I am starting to feel the effects of the Melphalan, just a little loss of interest in eating. This underlying nausea when food turns up, and about halfway through I could just leave it...but for the sake of my health I plough on and eat every last crumb. Although I had to level a complaint at lunchtime when my chicken curry turned up and the portion appeared to be a single large spoonful with only one small chunk of chicken breast in. I was told that too many people ordered the curry today, it was a popular choice. But then the other choice was burger and onions (and I think it's the tinned type if you remember those?) which isn't appealing. On the plus side because of my dissatisfaction the lady who does the meals gave me the 'choices' menu like I had last time which means I can, within NHS reason, have whatever I want. Fish fingers, chips and tinned spaghetti anyone?
No comments:
Post a Comment