Day 11 of Phase 2 - Back in hospital!

Well, 11 days after being discharged, and I'm back in hospital! It's quite a long story as to why, so please bare with me, and make yourself comfortable.

It's been a difficult start to this second stage of treatment to say the least, so you will have to forgive me for the delay in the blog. On Monday 20th July I officially started treatment as an outpatient and it was my first visit to the day centre. I have to say, the day centre is much better than I thought it would be - everyone was very relaxed and friendly. However, I was there for much longer on Monday than I would have liked. The treatment was supposed to last 4 hours, so we were told to arrive for 9am. But despite the fact that I arrived at 9am, my chemo didn't make an appearance till after midday, so I ended up being stuck in hospital till 5.30pm - they even had to chuck me out of the day centre and move me to a different floor so that the nurses could go home. The chemo they gave me has some weird side-effects too. Do you know when you jump into a swimming pool you sometimes get this horrible feeling that chlorine has gone up your nose? I felt like that for a good hour whilst having treatment. Weirdest side-effect ever.

Tuesday meant that it was time for the dreaded lumber puncture. I began the day down in the day centre having more chemotherapy - luckily this one only lasts 10 minutes. I then had to head up to the ward. People can usually have their lumber punctures done down in the day centre, but I absolutely insist on being given sedation, meaning that they have to do it in the ward. I really don't understand how anyone can have it done without sedation to be honest, they are better people than I will ever be. Once again my lumber puncture was problematic as they could not find the right part of my spine. This seems to happen every single time, so I'm starting to wonder if my spine is actually normal. However, luckily, they did heavily sedate me, so despite it being problematic, I wasn't really aware of what was going on and managed to survive unscathed.

Wednesday onwards was much better, as I simply had a short 10 minute treatment in the morning and was back home by 11am. The chemotherapy treatment does make me extremely tired though, so usually I have been back home at 11am and...straight to bed!

However, by this Monday I was feeling very weak and faint, so we needed to go into the day centre so that I could get a blood transfusion. It took till 4pm for the blood to arrive, by which point I was feeling very ropy, and because the blood had arrived so late, they needed to move me up to the ward as it would take 4 hours to complete the transfusion. So, I headed up to the ward, thinking that once that blood transfusion had finished I would be able to head home again. No such luck. When my blood results came back, we also received my CRP results. CRP are a protein in the blood, and the higher the levels, the higher the levels of inflammation - which leads to infection. A 'normal' person usually has levels of about 10, and an infected person would have levels of about 200-300. When you have leukemia, your CRP levels are higher than normal, but in this particular test, my levels were raised to 70, which is even higher than you would normally expect in someone with my condition. This meant that the doctors all suddenly panicked because I might have an infection and I got readmitted into hospital.

On top of my faintness, I have also been feeling some pain in my lower stomach, which led the doctors to believe that it might be a bowel or bladder infection. So, since being readmitted, I have had various types of scans to see if they can find anything. First I had an ultrasound scan (which was very painful as the woman kept pressing directly on the area that hurts), followed by an X-Ray and then a CT Scan. The ultrasound and X-Ray did not show anything, but the CT Scan did provide some answers - the pain from my stomach seems to be from an inflammation in my small intestine. However, the CT Scan also showed us something that we weren't actually looking for - I have two blood clots, one in my leg and the other in my lung. As you can imagine, this was a bit of a shock, especially as I had not been having any symptoms that suggested blood clots. On the plus side though, it is something that is commonly seen in leukemia patients, and to treat it they simply have to give me an injection into my tummy every day for 6-12 weeks that will help thin the blood and get rid of the clotting. Annoyingly, I have now started to have some symptoms, as today I started getting chest pain, but I'm managing to control this with pain relief - thank the Lord for morphine! It is a beautiful thing.

In terms of the inflammation in the intestine, the doctors need to treat that with antibiotics whilst I am still in hospital. So, it looks like I will have to stay here for at least a few more days. I'm missing home like crazy (especially now I don't have constant access to a fridge and can't watch TV past midday), but in a way I feel very lucky that they have found the cause of the problem so early - now they will be able to treat everything before it gets any worse.

Ok, so my body seems to be struggling a little bit this week! But I promise that everything will be alright in the end, and hopefully I will be back home before we know it.