Peter’s Hospital Diary

One week on from the transplant and feeling OK! There are some side effects from the chemo kicking in, a couple of mouth ulcers and sore gums, and my throat feels a bit irritated, but I can still swallow OK, and eat normally – although this morning’s breakfast plumbed new depths – cold and overcooked! However, last night I didn’t get any dinner at all (maybe the catering staff have been reading this!) So one of the nurses heated up some chicken soup – very nice – thank you Debbie!

It is a cold but bright morning here in London, no snow though!

The night was uneventful – punctuated as usual with the observations and the early morning blood collection. Nothing from the vein this morning though, all from the Hickman line. That was followed by breakfast, already described, the junior doctors’ ward round, and the IV Itraconazole, girth measurement (stop laughing over there!!) and weight. That has all finished, so I must go and use the exercise bike and shower.

Yesterday afternoon passed reasonably uneventfully, although I did need a platelet transfusion. I suspected as much after a large bruise formed on the area where blood was taken from the vein yesterday morning (for the cyclosporin levels). This was confirmed when a reading of 5 came back. Normal range is 150-400! I also had a visit from Viki, the Haematology Nurse Specialist, and Liz, who is another transplant specialist late of the Royal Marsden Hospital.

Felicity came up to see me yesterday and stayed for about 5 hours so I could catch up on all that is happening at home, as well as bringing some clean clothes. I also had some cyclosporin after the blood test confirmed that the levels were correct.

You may have had some problems getting the blog in the last 18 hours. Mark had a problem with his phone line, and lost broadband. Fortunately he has another BB connection, so after a bit of reconfiguring, got this back on line. However it takes up to 24 hours for all the Domain Name Servers (the servers that your browser uses convert human memorable names such as dellmar.net into a computer readable address like 21.123.200.94) to update across the internet so that your browser can find them! End of networking lesson!