Peter’s Hospital Diary

Well, no use beating about the bush… the results were all that I had hoped for with no evidence of any active disease! There was a little bit of take up of the tracer round my neck, but that is considered to be normal metabolic activity and nothing to worry about. My blood results were good too, my haemaglobin is at 11.5 (slightly anaemic) but my liver function seems to back to normal. The creatinin levels are still slightly high, indicating that my kidney function still isn’t all that it was before the transplant, but is nothing to worry about, at least in the short term. Perhaps in a few decades time if it hasn’t return to normal by then!

After the hugely relieving PET scan results I went off to the lung function laboratory. Here results weren’t quite as good as the gas transfer function of my lungs (how well oxygen and other gases pass across the lung surface) is still not back up to the pre-transplant levels. Again nothing too serious, but I am going back next week for another test - just in case the three or four pints of HSB (Hampshire Strong Bitter) that preceded a curry while I was out last night on “a run ashore” had anything to do with it!

So apart from the repeat lung function test next week, I won’t be going back to Guy’s for another 6 weeks when I should get the results of a chimerism test, for which blood was taken today. Also at that time another PET scan will be booked 6 weeks after that (about mid-October). If that also proves negative, then the routine PET scans will stop.

You might wonder (as I did) why I had another chimerism test, when the last one showed that my blood was 100% donor. Well it is still possible for the old immune system to fight a rear guard action and attempt its own take-over bid, so there will be chimerism checks every 3 months until a year has passed, when the frequency of the checks decreases. Should there be evidence of a reverse take-over, I can have the stored lymphocytes that were taken from my donor at the time of the transplant to put a stop to the rebellious cells!

So where to with the blog? I did think this might be the last post, but with some test results still to come, I will probably leave it running for a while. I can continue to run it as a general diary (although that wasn’t my intention at the start) but once I start back to work full time (now confirmed as 1 September) life will be pretty routine, apart from the odd holiday/diving expedition etc. So it will stay for a while and I will continue to update it, although the frequency of the updates may decrease as time passes.

Meanwhile…. Onwards and Upwards!

And to the person who had stumbled across my blog (I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name) that I saw in the outpatients clinic today… Good luck!

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