Monday… Monday!
Mar 8th 2010PeterGetting My Life Back!
My hope that Friday’s ECP would be equally uneventful was not entirely fulfilled! The kits come in two versions, one, the 125 ml kit takes 125 ml of blood , centrifuges it, stores the lymphocytes and returns the centrifuged blood back. This happens over 6 cycles. The large kit takes 250ml of blood, does the same, but takes only 3 cycles. The end result is that 750ml of blood is processed, but the large kit is slightly faster.
The machines are prepped in advance (they take about 25 minutes to set up, and I generally have a small kit. However on Friday, the machine had been set up with a large one. Not a problem, had that before… but on Friday morning my blood pressure was slightly lower than normal (it always is a bit low anyway).
This caused great consternation, with frequent blood pressure checks, a saline infusion (to increase BP) which meant the saline bag emptied during the procedure, and constant checking to see if I felt OK (I did!). So it was all a bit of a faff, and took a bit longer than expected. However I can’t fault the nursing staff, who were only being careful!
The entrance to St Thomas’s has been re-vamped, with quite a good shopping/food area – including an M “This is not just (hospital) food” & S Simply food outlet. Unfortunately the staff wouldn’t let me nip down (while the lymphocytes were being irradiated with UV light) but the wife of another patient very kindly went and got my BLT for me! The entrance does look very good – I hope the same effort is going into re-furbishing the treatment areas and wards!
After the session finished, I nipped over to Waterloo to get the train down to Bournemouth where I was met by the rest of the family. A browse round Christchurch (lovely town) and then a meal in a restaurant on Bournemouth sea front (near Boscombe Pier).
The rest of the weekend was fairly uneventful, apart from a vist by an old school friend, Ian, and his wife, Carolyn. Good to see you both!
So – onwards and upwards!