No more Hickman line

I had a lot on, yesterday, and I was far too tired by the evening to do any writing. Sorry about that.

I woke up a bit earlier than usual, or rather was woken for my blood and couldn't get back to sleep afterwards. The ward round was quite late in the morning, and filled me in on what was planned for the day; platelets first, to bring my clotting up, then cyclophosphamide and my intrathecal methotrexate in the afternoon. Quite a busy day. Everything went quite smoothly, but I really was quite busy; the only time I got a chance to lie quietly all day was after my intrathecal, and for some reason I just couldn't sleep then. Instead I watched the final hour of The Godfather Part II, which I started watching on boxing day. Eventually, around nine o'clock, I finally felt very tired indeed and went to sleep early.

Today was a lot quieter. It was decided that my Hickman line had finally become more of a liability than an asset, so it would be coming out at some point in the afternoon, which also meant that I'd need a peripheral line inserted. Apart from these little procedures, though, nothing out of the ordinary was planned. Mum came round to visit after lunch (fish and chips), and Shamus inserted a peripheral line into my right hand. It's weird being hooked up by my arm, again, after so long using the Hickman. I was given my cytarabine injection into the new line, then it was flushed and disconnected; it's nice being free of the lines. I had a little sleep, then Emma — one of the registrars here — removed my Hickman line. Due to the amount of damage I'd already done to it, it was literally just a matter of snipping the suture anchoring it to my skin and pulling it straight out. It wouldn't have held in for very much longer, even if it hadn't been removed today, I don't think.

Anyway, I'm quite tired again, now. Good night.

Happy Boxing Day!

Sorry for not updating yesterday, I don't really have an excuse other than festive laziness — I was too busy watching television during the time I'd normally have spent blogging to write anything.

Yesterday was quite good fun. Mum, dad, Francis, Gabriel and Madeleine all came up to visit in the morning, and brought me my presents. Socks and bottles of smelly stuff dominated the proceedings (the staff bought me a little nice little French Connection toiletries set), but I also got an impossible jigsaw puzzle, a Mighty Boosh DVD and a copy of More Brain Training for the DS. Apparently my brain age is 60.

All of the excitement got to me pretty quickly, and everyone cleared out after lunch to let me take a nap. I ended up spending most of the rest of the day on my own (aaaaw), which is a first for me on Christmas. Mum and dad came to visit again for a while in the evening, and we watched Doctor Who. After this, I channel surfed for a while and then went to sleep for the night.

I was woken up at 1 o'clock and then at 2:30am to have some blood taken for one of the tests they run against my antibiotics dosage, then again later in the morning for my regular full blood count sample. I'm sure there were other interruptions during boxing day morning, because I woke up at nine o'clock feeling pretty shattered. To compound this feeling of rubbishness, the relatively rich food I ate yesterday conspired with the fizzy lucozade I've basically been living on to give me quite a sore tummy throughout the day. As a result, I just tried to sleep as possible; I did watch the first third of The Godfather Part II, but apart from that I really did sleep – or at least doze – for most of the day.

Mum and dad were up to visit during the afternoon, and left to drive dad to the airport. He flew out to Uist for a short break on his own, just him and his cold, at the little house we have up there. He'll be back down in Glasgow next week, at which point Mum plans to go up to Uist with, with Madeleine I think. Anyway, Mum visited again in the evening, but I slept right through this; I only heard from the nurses later on that she'd been up.

I'm going to watch another hour of this movie now, I think, and then go back to bed. Good night.

'Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the ward, not a creature was stirring; not even the irrepressible Dr. Tansey. He'll be in tomorrow, though.

Mum's got my little room looking quite festive, with lights and a jar of baubles and a little plastic tree from Habitat. She complains that the nursing staff gave her a row for not making the place up earlier. I've even got a Christmas stocking hanging from my gas cylinder bracket, with a present or two waiting for me. The family will come up tomorrow morning to open their presents with me, so I'll wait. It'll be interesting to see what Santa brings The Man Who Has Everything Including Cancer.

I felt slightly better today than I have done, I don't know whether it's the last vestiges of the infection leaving me or if I'm just getting used to the trauma the antibiotics are visiting on my system. Hopefully I'll be well enough tomorrow to eat the roast potatoes which the kitchen have promised to send up for my Christmas lunch. If not, it'll be festive rice cakes and Lucozade for me. The nutritionist will be very disappointed with the missed opportunity to put on weight.

Nothing interesting happened with my treatment, today. I officially finished the second week of phase two, with the fourth injection of cytarabine, so I suppose that's worthy of a milestone; only two weeks of chemo left in this block. The decision seems to have been made to put in a new Hickman line at the end of the week, once I'm off the antibiotics; this one is really starting to fray at the edges, and they're quite worried that it'll be colonised by bacteria sooner, now, rather than later. It's been quite a while since I last went under the knife.

Anyway, slightly better or no, I still feel pretty rotten. I'm going back to sleep.

Antibiotics

Writing up a bit earlier today, what with the scarcity of late-evening consciousness lately. Thanks to everyone who's been enquiring as to my health during my recent blog hiatuses. I've been trying to sleep as much as possible, lately, and feeling pretty awful during those times when I've been awake. The high-dose antibiotics have utterly wiped out my intestinal fauna, so I can't really eat anything at the moment. Not that I've felt like eating anything in the past three days; I attempted some lightly salted tortilla chips this afternoon, but I soon gave up when my stomach started making some rather alarming noises. I might try again with some rice cakes or Ryvita or something later, if mum manages to get a hold of any for me.

Today was pretty quiet. Mum was up for a while in the morning, and stayed through the ward round and my cytarabine intravenous. She seems a lot more familiar with this sort of pump-'em-full-of-antibiotics medicine than she's been with the acute cancer chemotherapy stuff, and I think that makes her feel a bit more secure; I think she deals with people who feel like I do right now every day, at work. Dr Tansey tells me there's nothing can be done for my antibiotic-induced diarrhoea until they're sure I don't have clostridium difficile, but hopefully by tomorrow the lab will have got back to us with that and they can start me on the codeine. For now it's water and potassium tablets, and just hope I don't lose too much more weight.

Whoops, so much for posting early; I fell asleep after typing this up, and never got around to signing off. Well, I can do that now: goodnight.

Back inside

Sorry again about the lack of updates, I developed an infection on Thursday and this is the first time since that I've felt well enough to type anything.

My uncle John drove me into the hospital on Wednesday, quite late in the morning, for my day in. He hung around long enough to sort out my duvet and see me into the care of the nursing staff, but headed off soon afterwards as he's not one of my named visitors. The nurses lost no time in getting me hooked up with a line for my cytarabine, and set up a second line for my blood transfusions; apparently they wanted to get everything out of the way before my intrathecal at three. Thus, I got my chemotherapy in record time and had two units of blood pumped into me at a rate of one every two hours. I also met with the nutritionist again, and she was pleased that my weight was holding steady; she prescribed some Fortisips for use at home, all the same. After this, they wheeled me round and gave me my lumbar puncture and methotrexate, and then just left me to rest for a while. All the day's activity had worn me out a little, so I think I slept for a bit. I can't actually remember what I did for the rest of the day, so maybe I slept longer than I thought; mum probably came up to visit in the evening.

I was woken for my bloods on Thursday morning, but fell back to sleep until about ten o'clock; the rest of my morning was pretty uneventful. My chemo was scheduled for about two, but some emergency on the ward caused me to be forgotten about for a couple of hours. I was eventually remembered and dosed with cytarabine, and then I phoned mum up and had her collect me. She got me home for about six, by which point I was already feeling a bit rough; I'd been dozing off in the car. I went straight upstairs and slept until dinner time, but I wasn't really very hungry and left most of the potato and cauliflower curry which mum had made for me. I went back to sleep, but decided (nutritionist's orders!) that I'd better get something substantial for a snack; I ordered in a fish supper from the place up the road, and mum collected it for me. Once again, I didn't finish the entire meal; I managed most of it, though, and my sister finished it off for me. After I was finished, I went back to sleep. I spent most of the night waking up and thinking I might vomit, but I just put this down to post-chemo nausea and eating too much; when I eventually was sick, mum called the hospital just to be on the safe side. They decided that my temperature wasn't high enough to worry about, so just sent me back to bed. I spent most of the night waking up and wishing I'd vomit again, just to get it out of my system.

Friday morning came, and I got quite a long lie. I really was feeling pretty unpleasant by this point, so mum eventually insisted that I get up and move it into the hospital. My temperature on admission had jumped to 37.9, which was rather cause for concern when weighed with my vomiting and tiredness; the doctors came round in due course and started me on a course of massive doses of vancomycin, gentamycin and tazocin, plus fluids. Apparently the doses of antibiotics they give people like me are high enough that they need to test blood in between administrations, to make sure they've not boxed in my kidneys. Anyway, they got me started on those, measured my temperature again (38.4C, ouch), gave me a paracetamol and left me to sleep it off. And sleep I did; I can't have been conscious for more than about three hours in total over all of Friday. The treatment seems to work, though, and my temperature was already falling by the nighttime.

I've felt much better, today. They still have me on antibiotics, and I still feel pretty tired and lacking of appetite, but much better overall. Much reduced nausea and tiredness, for one thing, though the tiredness was quite nice in a way; just sleeping through everything was better than dozing through the way I did today. I got my chemotherapy quite early today, and later on a unit of blood. The blood is still going in just now, as a matter of fact. What with the chemo and antibiotics, I've been hooked up to a couple of lines pretty much all day; this looks set to continue for tomorrow, at least. Hopefully I'll get my freedom of the room again soon. For now, I'm going back to sleep.

Edit: oh yeah, I almost forgot about the title of this entry. Because of my infection, they won't be letting me out again for the duration of this treatment block; if I'd remained healthy, I'd probably have had another day or two outside, possibly just stretching to Christmas. As it is, I'm in from now until mid-January, which kind of sucks; I guess that's just the way it has to go. Oh well, I've put up with longer incarcerations.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I was too tired to write anything on Sunday and I had no internet access last night.

Sunday saw the last of my four days of daily cytarabine injections; the nurses are getting pretty good at streamlining the procedure, so I was out by about one in the afternoon. We decided to go for a drive up to the James Hamilton Heritage Centre, a park in East Kilbride which has a boating loch with a nice short (a mile or so) walk around it. In less cancer-riddled days, I learned to sail, kayak and windsurf there; I don't think the protocol lets me back in the water until about 2010. Maybe global warming will let me dispense with the wetsuit, by then. After a circuit of the park, we went to the Centre's cafe for some tea; me, mum and dad shared a pot, and Madeleine and her friend had hot chocolate and Rice Krispie cakes. I shot half a roll of Provia 100, then accidentally rewound it all the way past the leader when I was changing to some Tri-X 400+2 for shooting indoors; it would actually be worth buying a leader retriever, just so that I could use those last sixteen frames of expensive colour film. Maybe I'll do that.

Once we got home, I took a little nap. A mile is quite a big step up from our usual five-minute walks in the park, and it did wear me out a little. My thigh muscles are actually still a little tired from the exertion, even today. I got through the rest of the day quite quietly, but got really tired at about nine o'clock and just couldn't muster the energy to do anything for the rest of the night – blog-writing included – so I just went to my bed.

We didn't go into the hospital on Monday until quite late, so I had a bit of a long lie. I had no chemotherapy scheduled for the day, so I just had my blood taken and then we waited around for the ward round to reach us. The doctors gave me the once-over and mum got the chance to have a little chat with Dr Morrison, December's consultant. I wasn't due any treatment on Tuesday, so the doctors offered me the opportunity to just spend the entire day at home; the caveat being that my blood count revealed that I was quite anaemic, so it really would be at home – I'd be too tired to really do anything else. The alternative would be to come in for a couple of units of blood, which would take about eight hours to administer; I could spend Tuesday in either my own or in the hospital's bed, and I thought the former sounded better. The doctors prescribed me two units of red cells for Wednesday, and sent us on our way.

I'd invited some friends, Michelle and Joe, around for lunch at one o'clock. They arrived just as we did, so we went inside and chatted and listened to music and stuff while mum made a nice wild mushroom risotto for us. We also played some Mario Kart on the old Nintendo 64, which was brilliant fun, before mum called us in for lunch; the risotto was delicious, but apparently mum thought it was somewhat overcooked. Michelle and Joe left after lunch, Michelle having work at four; mum gave them a lift down to the train station, and I went to take a nap. I spent the remainder of the day in bed, nursing my anaemia, and then my internet connection connection cut out; apparently it was something wrong on Virgin's end, because it was working again in the morning. I took advantage of the break in connectivity to get some sleep.

As for today, it's been just as uneventful as predicted. I took some photographs of the cat in the garden while the light was nice, this morning, then went down to my gran's for a lunch of fish and boiled potatoes. Internet chess and listening to music occupied me for most of the rest of the day; I went downstairs for dinner, but apart from that spent most of the day in my room. Tomorrow will be pretty busy, what with the blood and intrathecal and all, and so I think I'll turn in now for an early night.

A walk in the park

I got up early this morning, at about half past seven, and made pancakes for breakfast. I couldn't find a measuring jug, though, so I just experimented with adding milk a bit at a time until the pancakes spread in the frying pan the way they're supposed to. We headed into the hospital for half past nine, and arrived a little later; Angus was on today, and okayed me to have my chemotherapy in the morning rather than waiting in all day the way we've been doing. So, I got my blood taken and hooked up to a line, and got my chemotherapy at about half past ten. I had the dressing on my Hickman line changed while the fluids were going in — it completely disintegrated last night, somehow, and was just hanging together by the corners. Anyway, we were out and blinking in the daylight by one o'clock, and with my mercaptopurine in a phial in mum's bag; no need to go back into the hospital at all, today. Hooray.

We decided to go for a walk in Victoria Park, because it was just a quick drive away under the Clyde tunnel. We walked around the boating pond and saw the ducks, then saw a family feeding the swans on our way back, with the inevitable swan-on-child finger-pecking. I decided that the fossil grove was too far to walk that day, so we drove back home. I took a nap for a couple of hours, and had a microwave cannelloni for an afternoon snack.

I spent most of the rest of the day just pottering around the house. I took a couple of pictures of people around the place, and rested quite a lot. I also arranged lunch with a couple of friends on Monday, so that should be quite good. I think I'll go for a shower, now, and go to bed.

Routine

I felt pretty good today, much better than yesterday; I think I might have had some sort of a hangover from all the treatments I had on Wednesday. We went into the hospital quite early, and only just got caught in the rush hour traffic. Mum dropped me off and went on to her work, and I got to work on Clare's site; it's really coming along, now. I ate a "share with the family"-sized bag of salt and vinegar Kettle Chips in a single sitting, whose fat content both impressed and terrified the doctors. They're confident I won't have any problems putting my weight back on, once I get through the treatment.

At midday I had my lunch in the hospital, then got a little tired and went for a nap before my chemotherapy. The cytarabine turned up a little earlier today than it did yesterday, and I got the intravenous at about three o'clock; two hours of fluids followed, so I just stayed in for dinner. Dad was along at six to pick me up, and we sorted out my drugs and the arrangements for tomorrow and went home. Dad dropped me off and went to the supermarket to get himself some dinner; I took the walk down to gran's house for a little visit.

Tomorrow, it's hoped, my chemo might be a bit earlier — possibly even in the morning, if things go quickly. This means I might get out in the daylight, for a change; it'll be nice to go for a walk in the light with the Leica. If we can't get the chemo early, I think mum and I might go for a walk in the park before the I.V. I also managed, today, to get half-way through organising another lunch visit with my Uni friends, before my phone's battery ran out. Oh well, I'll be able to sort that out tomorrow. Big plans. I'd better get an early night.

Phase two

Today's now the second day of phase two of my treatment — apologies for not writing anything yesterday, I was far too tired. We went into the hospital very early in the morning, mum and I, and it was confirmed that we'd be forging ahead with the consolidation stage of the therapy regardless of my platelet counts. I was scheduled for intrathecal methotrexate, intravenous cyclophosphamide and oral mercaptopurine, all in the one day; there seem to be quite a lot of different chemotherapies involved in this stage. Because of the intrathecal, unfortunately, I'd be spending the night in the hospital.

As it turned out, my platelets were actually at 78 — they'd jumped back, just as the doctor predicted. The first treatment of the day was the intrathecal, and it went just as smoothly as the ones I've had previously; I have a little bit of back pain, but I managed to dodge the headache entirely. Next up was the cyclophosphamide, which is a mustard gas. You know, like they used in world war one. My stuff is a bit more sophisticated, but the essential chemistry is the same; the dose came packaged in a suitably sinister-looking mustard-coloured drip bag. Mercaptopurine wrapped up the day, two rather unassuming pale yellow tablets; they're still proper chemotherapy, though, the nurse who delivered them carried them in a pill cup in gloved hands. I was advised to try to minimise contact between the pills and anything that wasn't my stomach.

After my early morning and all of the treatment, I was pretty tired in the evening. Mum and dad were over for a while and left at about ten; I fell asleep an hour or so later. It was hideously warm in my room, that night, so I didn't sleep very well, and woke up feeling pretty tired. I suppose there might have been some aspect of a hangover from all of Wednesday's chemotherapy involved, too, but I've felt pretty listless today. I was told quite early that I'd be allowed home, which is always nice to hear; I looked forwards to playing with my Leica in the daylight. Before I was free to leave, however, I was due some more chemotherapy; as it turned out, I ended up getting this intravenous cytarabine at about four o'clock in the afternoon. Just as it was getting dark. Two further hours of IV fluids followed, during which time I just had my dinner in the hospital; I was given my daily mercaptopurine, had my medicines bag double-checked, and I was free to go.

Mum drove me down the road, and we went for a little walk in the park along with dad and Madeleine. I had some toasted cheese for my supper, rather a lot of toasted cheese in fact, which I ate sitting in front of the fire. Being home is brilliant, even if it is just for a short while.

One last reprieve... again

We got up early this morning and headed back into the hospital, where mum dropped me off before heading off to work. I had my blood taken and settled in for the day, so I was quite surprised when the doctor popped around at eleven to announce that my platelet count was still too low for them to begin the next phase; they really want to see those at seventy-five billion per litre before they start me on the new poisons. I'm told I shouldn't worry that things are getting a bit behind schedule; my platelets should just jump up all at once, after the marrow-suppressive effect of phase one wears off. Anyway, it looked like I was getting home again for another day on the outside. I stayed for lunch (moong bean curry, which I had with some crisps) and mum picked me up after her half-day at work.

Once I got home, I discovered that my Leica had finally arrived from Oxfordshire. I lost no time unpacking this and loading a roll of Tri-X 400, and wasted a handful of frames just snapping stuff to familiarise myself with the controls. Mum and I took a little walk in the park at about three o'clock, and I took another couple of shots in the nice light. I find I'm getting quite a lot of my old strength back, now that I'm getting all of this exercise walking up and down stairs and so on; hopefully I'll get enough of these days out this phase that I can get back to something like my old self. Mum went out to buy some shopping, afterwards, and I pottered around the garden for a bit taking pictures of the bare branches; eventually the light failed entirely, and I gave up and went back inside.

Despite my early morning and considerable exertions, I found myself to be remarkably awake and alert during basically all of the day; I suppose this might be due to sleeping better on my tailing-off dosage of steroids. Anyway, I tried and failed to take a nap at about four; instead, I spent a while on my Grand MP3 Collection Organisation project. It won't be long now before I can set iTunes on random and never have to skip a single song. I broke off this effort for dinner, which was a delicious home-made lentil soup with rolls and (for some reason) potato scones. I managed to get a couple of hopefully quite nice photos of everyone at the dinner table; it'll be interesting to see those ones, at least, from this test roll. After dinner, I grabbed a bottle of beer and we all relaxed in front of the fire for a while.

The rest of the day passed mostly uneventfully. Dad was unreachable on his mobile, so mum had to drive off to the hospital to collect my bedtime medicines; I've been started on a new antifungal, Posaconazole, but the rest is just the same old. He got in later on and popped up for a minute before going to his bed; the exam he was taking today seems to have gone okay. I sorted out my drugs, after he'd gone, and settled down to write this up. I still don't feel particularly tired, but I'm going to try to get to sleep anyway; very early morning, tomorrow.

One last reprieve

Me and mum headed in to the hospital this morning for my blood count, and got a bit of a scare when one of the nurses mentioned in passing that the plan was for me to stay in the hospital that day. Luckily, nobody could suggest any real reason why I should stay other than that it wasn't the weekend; my neutrophils are still climbing, and my platelets still aren't high enough to start the next treatment. Thus, we managed to wrangle one more day on the outside. We headed home via the supermarket, where we picked up some food; we'd invited Gran down for dinner.

I made myself some nachos for lunch, then Gran McKernan and my Aunt Jean came for a wee visit. They were both pretty happy to see me after such a long time, gran especially; I think she's been a bit worried that the strict limitations on visitors would be kept up even while I was home. We had some tea, but they eventually left before dinner itself; I went upstairs and had a little nap before dinnertime.

Mum made a really nice macaroni cheese with roast potatoes and parsnips, and some Brussels sprouts. I think I ticked sprouts on the menu at the hospital, as well, when it looked like I might be in for Monday Supper; I'm glad I got the ones at home instead, and I don't even like sprouts. After dinner, we participated in the great family activity of watching television for an hour or two; I got a little tired, eventually, so I headed upstairs and had a rest before organising some files and CDs and stuff to take back into the hospital with me tomorrow. I've got enough now by way of games and so on that I should be able to survive the next phase of treatment.

Speaking of treatment, one of the things about being home is that I've had to self-administer, and therefore pay attention to, my medicines; normally I just get a little cup of pills each morning/lunchtime/dinnertime/bedtime, and knock these back without thinking too much about what's in them. Here's a roll-call of what I've been on since I got home — bear in mind that these are just my normal everyday meds, nothing special or chemotherapy-ish: Domperidone, the Champagne of antiemetics, four times a day; Omeprazole, further anti-sickness, in the morning; Fluconazole, prophylaxis against fungal infection, mornings; Aciclovir, prophylaxis against viral infection, mornings and night; Co-trimoxazole, prophylaxis against bacterial infection, Monday morning; Dexamethasone, steroids, mornings; Laculose and senna, laxatives, morning and night. Phew.

Tomorrow sounds like it's the start of phase two of my treatment, the consolidation stage. Stay tuned for word of all the exciting chemotherapies I'll be getting over the next five weeks!

Another day at home

I slept well last night, in my own bed, and woke up at about eight. Once we'd got my morning pills out of the way, mum and I had breakfast and headed off back to the hospital for my blood count. We got there at quarter past ten, and I had blood taken and my dressing looked at; we waited around for the results to come back, or rather mum waited while I took a nap, and then we were allowed to go back home. Mum dropped me off, and went to buy some food for lunch; I went upstairs and rested for a while.

I invited James, Ewan and Michelle around for lunch, and they arrived at about three o'clock. We just sat around and talked for a while, but it was good fun and it was really nice to see people again. Mum made a delicious spinach and ricotta lasagne for us, and left us to our own devices. Unfortunately, inevitably, I got a bit tired and had to shoo everyone off for about half past five.

After a couple of hours of rest, we had dinner; dad made some chilli which I had with pita bread, rice being deemed off-limits just to be on the safe side. Home-made food really is the greatest stuff in the world, one just doesn't appreciate what one has till it's gone. After all the food and excitement of the day, I retired to the attic and read for a while. Ten o'clock at the hospital again, tomorrow, so I'll sign off now and go get some sleep.

Home Sweet Home

It took a little longer getting home today than we were expecting; the registrar wanted me in for the results of my full blood count, the pharmacist wanted me in for the delivery of my discharge medications, the nurses wanted me in to go over what I should take and when. In the end, mum was allowed to drive me home at about three o'clock, just in time to catch the football traffic. Oh well, I got home eventually.

They've really worked hard to tidy the house up, in my absence; we have a rather stylish red wooden christmas tree from Habitat rather than the dust-and-germs magnet of a real tree, and the attic bedroom has been cleared out for my stay. Mum and dad will be sleeping in my considerably messier room, for the duration.

Climbing the stairs to the attic is quite hard work, for me. I never really appreciated how much I've wasted away in five weeks of lounging around the place; it's quite shocking, in fact. I can get up and down easily enough, one step at a time, but... well, it's a lot more work than I remember. I risked the arduous climb down, though, soon after I arrived, in order to make myself some toasted cheese; the first food I've made myself in over a month, now, and a really nice change from hospital toast.

After this, I retired to my citadel and enjoyed the benefits of a real live wired-in internet connection. After a month of 3G's lag and temperamentality, it really is a treat to be able to click a link and know that it's going to work first time. It'll be hard going back, but I suppose I'll manage.

Gran came up to visit at dinner time, along with my aunts from down the road; they headed off quite quickly, but gran stuck around while mum and dad took Gabriel and Rachel (his girlfriend) to see the final performance of this year's Gang Show. Madeleine, as it turned out, neglected to get tickets sorted out for her friends, so mum and dad gave up their seats and let Gabriel and Rachel take care of the youngsters. I suppose dad'll have to watch the DVD with me later on; I'm sure he didn't mind missing the live show too much.

Anyway, we had a huge fish supper for dinner, from the relatively hygienic chippy up the road; I've not eaten so well in forever. I had a little nap afterwards, and spent the rest of the day relaxing in a bed with a duvet. It's quite late, now, and I'll need to get up quite early tomorrow to get into hospital for my bloods. There's quite a lot of excitement planned for Sunday, so I'd best get my sleep.

Freedom!

It's been determined that my neutrophil counts are now high enough that I'll survive outside of isolation. Therefore, and because I have no pressing treatments looming, I should be allowed to return home on day pass; this means I'll be allowed outside of the hospital, and only have to return in the mornings to get my blood taken. I'm quite happy with this news — I've spent five weeks, now, in this room, and it'll be really nice to get out for the change alone.

Michelle Scott popped in for a visit today, and mum came in to meet her. They talked for a while about the sorts of things that it'd be inadvisable for me to do once I got out – this was before I was told I'd be getting out tomorrow, when the assumption was "next week-ish" – and just chatted generally with each other for a while. I was feeling a little tired, so I just let them get on. Eventually they both headed off, mum to feed the family and Michelle presumably to see another patient, and I got back to messing about on the computer.

There's not a lot else to say about today; my usual updates on what I'm reading, and so on, seem rather inconsequential next to the big news of my looming release. I wonder what I'll write about tomorrow.

Phase one complete

Well, I got my final dose of intravenous vincristine today as planned, thus concluding the induction phase of my chemotherapy. I've been lucky that I've had nothing worse than dry skin tingly fingers by way of complaints; hopefully things will continue as they've started. I'll be in for another week or two while my neutrophil counts recover enough that I can go home, but it's nice to have this milestone out of the way.

Nothing else really to report, today. I'm feeling a little tired, nothing serious, but I think I'll go for a little sleep now. Good night.

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.

Lack of updates

Sorry about this, I was distracted from blogging yesterday and I'm far too sleepy today to write more than these few sentences. Fuller explanation/mini-recap tomorrow, I promise.

Bit bored now

I had no treatments tests or anything interesting done to me today, and only a quick head-in-the-door from the doctor. I also didn't seem to have anything like the latent boost from yesterday's blood that I'd been hoping for, and didn't feel like doing anything much productive. I did try to do some work on my aunt's site, but I got mired trying to sort out the ImageMagick library (needed for image resizing and so on) to work with Rails on my Mac; it now looks like I'll need to wait until I can install linux on this machine, before I can sign off on the task. Oh well.

I got through Vernon God Little, as I mentioned yesterday, and today planned to get started on The Fall of America a little book of Alan Ginsberg poetry which my sister's godfather (and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor) Michael Clancy brought me back from his Thanksgiving holiday. However, I've never really read poetry before and I'm not sure quite how to approach it, so I decided to put it aside for now and started on John Banville's The Sea. Banville seems to know an awful lot of obscure words.

Apart from that, today, I watched some Heroes, played through the start of Avernum 5, slept for an hour while mum was up after lunch, was too lazy to write out Christmas cards, took my sleeping pill. Good night.

Blood blood blood blood

Wow, that sleeping pill hit me pretty hard last night. I was woken this morning out of really quite a deep sleep, to have my blood taken; I completely failed to notice the nurse cleaning my line, drawing 20ml and tidying up afterwards, and though she'd just forgotten to do it. Weird. Anyway, she also set me up with a drip while she was in; I was due 3 units (!) of blood, apparently due to start some time that morning. As it happened, the first bag didn't show up until 1pm, so I spent the morning feeling all rubbish and anaemic.

I felt absolutely invincible in the evening, though, after I'd had the first few in. Lacking anything else particularly worthy of my superhumanly boosted work ethic and powers of concentration, I messed about with a couple of mathsy/programming problems on Project Euler, and polished off a big chunk of the work remaining on my aunt's site. Maybe I'll finish the rest tomorrow while I'm still feeling the benefit of the blood.

Apart from the unprecedented blood transfusion, there wasn't an awful lot went on today. I got through the quite funny Vernon God Little, and watched a movie with my lunch. Mum and dad visited variously throughout the day, with mum leaving in the afternoon to go to see my sister in the Glasgow Gang Show and taking her and her friends out to get some food afterwards. Apparently they all met Franz Ferdinand at the café they went to. Dad came up for a while in the evening and had some soup for his dinner, and we shared quite a nice bottle of perry. Mum popped up after dropping my sister off with her friends, and then they headed down the road together.