Mini-recap

Monday was fairly uneventful, except that I got another package through from Amazon containing a couple of books along with an electric razor and the oddly compelling Pokemon Diamond. Nothing interesting happened medically, unless you count a couple of nosebleeds, but at least I was entertained and got to look a bit less scruffy; I've not been able to shave since admission. I read a bit of The Sea, played through the demo section of Avernum 5, and noticed at midnight that it really was a bit too late to start writing a blog entry.

Tuesday was busier. I started the day with a plate of scrambled eggs on toast or, at least, the closest to scrambled egg which can be made with pasteurised egg. Nice and protein-ey, mind you, and it made a nice change from plain toast or porridge. The doctors were in early to make their usual observations on how well I'm doing, and to lay out the day's schedule; bone marrow aspirate at eleven thirty, then my intrathecal methotrexane at two. I also made the mistake of mentioning that I'd been eating peanuts to try to get my weight up a bit; I've never seen more horrified doctors in my life. Nuts, it seems, teem with every sort of fungal infection you can imagine. It's something to do with the fact that they're left sitting around dark warehouses for months and not really prepared in any sort of anti-anything manner. Fortunately I seem to have dodged that particular bullet, but that's nuts and seeds off the menu. I really like nuts.

Anyway, the bone marrow sample came out much more smoothly this time than last, and the procedure isn't nearly as painful as people would have you believe. Or maybe that's just the painkillers and lorazepam talking. Not to mention the lidocaine. The little hand-drill still felt odd, going through the bone; it hadn't occurred to me that drilling was involved before, even though I must have got a much bigger hole drilled during the taking of my on-admission bony core sample.

Lunch was wheeled in immediately as Angus was finishing up, and long before I should have been sitting up. You'd be amazed how difficult it is to eat veggie mince and potatoes lying down. I was able to pivot about thirty degrees on my hip, so it wasn't too messy, though mum did draw parallels with the Ancient Romans when she walked in on me thus. After lunch, I was informed that the 2PM was off — they'd taken heed of my moaning about nosebleeds, taken another look at my clotting, and decided to get me some platelets before the main event.

Blood products take ages to organise, I don't know how the A&E department manage; you'd think haematology would have some sort of hotline. Long story short, it was four o'clock before I was wheeled along to the intrathecal procedure room. The lumbar puncture went well, the samples were good, the chemotherapy went in without any problems; I'm quite glad, nevertheless, that that's the last of those for a while. Back to my room for half past four, for my mandatory two hours of post-IT lying-flat-on-my-back. Dinner, spinach and potato aloo saag with rice, at half past five.

After my many drugs and procedures, I was pretty much shattered during the evening. Dad was up briefly, I think, and I passed out at about ten. Hence no blog.

Today was, of course, much quieter. I met the consultant for this month for the first time, though I've forgotten her name right now, and she seemed nice enough; it seems she's busy elsewhere, though, and will only be performing her duties on ward 24 on the odd day here and there. Doctors Tansy and McDonald will be filling in the blanks, from what I understand.

I noticed this morning that 3 finally seem to have got around to setting up proper monitoring of my internet usage. That is to say, when I use the internet, my traffic credit seems to decrease by a roughly corresponding amount. To celebrate having, apparently, two gigabytes of traffic remaining, I spent the morning installing the compiler for Haskell, a very nice functional programming language which was developed largely at (yay) Glasgow University. It's a great language for just playing about in, though it has to be said that I've never personally talked to anyone who's ever used it for any serious task; I have fun enough with it, and that's the main thing. I also grabbed ImageMagick, finally, and got it working with Rails, so hopefully now I can wrap up the programming side of Clare's site. Still waiting on a couple of things from Amazon before I can do the one or two tiny wee bits of artwork which I need for the site.

It was made note of yesterday that my skin's been drying up a bit which is, of course, an infection risk. Therefore, I showered this morning with an antibacterial moisturiser "soap substitute". Horrid stuff, but I guess I'm doing okay if that's the worst I have to put up with. I also slathered my elbows and hips in E45 cream, so that should keep the dermatologist happy. Maybe I should spend the time I'd normally be shampooing (saved time in the shower! baldness' silver lining!) just showering normally, then put the moisturiser on afterwards.

Weight holding steady, no interesting new side effects to report, final chemotherapy of this phase due tomorrow at some point, plenty to be reading and playing and doing, plenty of internet credit to tide me over. Things are going well. Goodnight.