Peter’s Hospital Diary

Yes, it really is 7 weeks yesterday since the transplant took place! I suppose the real difference is that the trees in the garden are startiing to bud, the bird life is more noticeable and the evenings are much lighter!

Another check-up yesterday and the general agreement seems to be that I am making good progress. I didn’t wait for all the blood test results, but my haemoglobin is continuing to rise (now at 10) and the basic blood chemistry seems to be heading in the right direction.

The main item of note is the stopping of the Cyclosporin; it was low dose anyway, but it is thought that this might provoke a little GvHd (a ‘good thing’) to encourage the Graft V Lymphoma Effect (a ‘very good thing’!!)

The next milestones will be the PET scan on Tuesday, to see how much of the underlying lymphoma remains, and the chimerism rests, when the ratio of donor DNA to my blood DNA will be measured. This shows how the donor immune system is doing in taking over from my own. I think I said in a previous post that this is being done slightly earlier than normal, because I went into the procedure with somewhat more active disease than was desirable, so I’ll await the outcome of those tests with interest (and anxiously!)

I saw Mark and Jean yesterday - you may remember that they were fellow patients having similar procedures - and I’m delighted that both were looking well, and also seem to be making good progress!

Work on transferring the blog to my server continues. I have a working set up at www.boraston.net/blog but there are some compatability problems between the two versions of the underlying database that stores the posts so I can’t import the old data - and upgrading my version of the database (MySQL for those that are interested) is not quite as straightforward (these things never are!) as I thought. Perhaps by the end of the weekend…

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Thank you for the comments so far - I’ll certainly keep the blog going while I have anything to report, and if the hosting does change, I’ll post that too. Meanwhile thanks to Mark for continuing to host it.

We had a good weekend and ventured out to a social event on Saturday night (a birthday party) and although I was a bit of a party pooper in that we were the first to leave, I wasn’t as tired on Sunday as I expected - I hope evidence that I am getting a bit stronger! My appetite is also getting better, and I am feeling better since the Cyclosporin dose was reduced - although I am told that 25mg/day is pretty low!

So - as ever - onwards and upwards!

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I haven’t been very diligent in writing the blog, but with weekly check-ups, there isn’t really a lot to report on healthwise!

However I did have another check yesterday, and also had the stitches from the Hickman line removal removed - so apart from a few (more) scars, that is all done and dusted!

Progress seems to remain good, although there is still slight concern over kidney function. They are working OK, but not quite as well as they were before I started the treatment - in particular creatinin (Sp!) clearence isn’t as good as it might be - the solution is to drink yet more water - recommended 3 litres a day (haven’t they seen there is a water shortage in the South???) and to reduce the cyclosporin dose again - a mere 25mg/day.

Apart from the weekly trips up to Guy’s I have been keeping gently busy round the house - the odd (easy) job, a bit of computer stuff (continuing my self training programme on Linux) although having said that, I have just foobar-ed one computer (now un-foobar-ed) which wasn’t very clever.

I am also considering the future of the blog. At some point soon I want to transfer it to one of my servers, but I am wondering how much longer it will continue to be useful… comments please!

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