End of Week 14 / Beginning Week 15 – Round 3!

End of Week 14 / Beginning Week 15 – Round 3!

Hospital. Waiting around. Blood tests. Bla Bla Bla…

“YOU’RE BLOOD COUNT IS VERY LOW SIR – WE WONT BE ABLE TO GO AHEAD TODAY”

What!? Damn. OK. When?

As my blood count was so low, specifically the neutrophil count, they would give me an injection that would stimulate my bone marrow to release white cells into the blood. Interesting!

So that’s what they did. And I went out for dinner for NYE which was nice…glass of champagne, or was it two…but returned to the hospital in good time so I was still safely locked away out of harm’s reach…

A couple of people called me that night which cheered me up...thanks girls x

I was warned that this injection could make my bones ache. IT FUCKING DID. All my bones throbbed with each beat of my heart for about 48 hours! However, pain killers work very well on pain, so it wasn’t so bad…

So New Year’s Day Round 3 began. I was out of hospital 4 days later…and SO pleased to get out of there. This was really starting to wear thin! The old moral was starting to get hit..jesus, so glad it was only 3 rounds…hard rounds but only 3..

In fact, my doctor suggested that we were probably vastly over doing it with 3 lots of this treatment…that seeing as it was clear after one round…even round 2 was maybe unnecessary. HOWEVER, being as there is no statistical evidence comparing the effects of 1, 2 or 3 rounds and the percentage of recurrence in each case…DID I WANT TO BE THAT TEST CASE? NO NOT REALLY.

Given the option, I would have chosen the third round anyway I think. Anything to stop it coming back right?

Of course, when given that option, you don’t know how bad its going to affect you. Round 3 was definitely the worst by far. I didn’t get the same horrible intense sickness I got in the first round…they amended and added to my anti-sickness plan and it worked (although round 3 they switched me back from metrochlopromide to domperidone. No one could give me a sensible answer as to why seeing as last time it all worked so well. This was intensely irritating to me..but “let it go!”…as was the conflicting advice as to when it was best to take this or that…but whatever, “let it go!”)…as I said earlier I think…KEEP CONTROL OF YOUR OWN TREATMENT…from my experience, the doctors and nurses and such like are all dong their very best to give you the best treatment possible, HOWEVER, it cant be as important to them as it is to you who is being treated, and they have to look after a lot of people…so my advice is to make sure everything is as you think it should be…take an interest. Not to mention that when I apologised to one of my nurses as I kept grilling him about details “why this, why that” he told me that from his experience he thought people who do take that kind of interest in their own treatment tend to have better recovery rates. Who knows.

It’s now two and a half weeks since I got out from round 3. This has definitely been the worst lot…everything has lasted longer and been worse. In fact, although I stopped taking anti-sickness drugs after about a week and a half that feeling still hasn’t gone, the drugs just stopped making any difference. My hearing was more affected, although that has mostly gone now…Its just tiredness now that’s really affecting me…but that’s ok, I’m just not doing much and resting a lot...luckily my work has been extremely supportive throughout all of this, and I am in a situation whereby I can dedicate all my time and energy to getting better – had I been a freelancer, or a sole trader, or working for an unsupportive employer this would have all been much harder.

I have a blood test at the end of next week to check my blood count is rising back to normal levels – it should be by now really…

And then don’t have another CT scan until 6 months after the last one…and then a year after that. This is a great sign of their confidence in my return to perfect health Im told J