Maintenance

Last Thursday I started my maintenance period, which is a relatively easy going period of treatment consisting of only a small amount of chemotherapy and lots of tablets to take at home. The idea is that this will keep me on an even keel until we learn more about when my bone marrow transplant will be. The amount of drugs that I will be taking will be adjusted each week to make sure that my blood results remain fairly stable - we obviously want to make sure that the leukemia does not come back, but we also don't want to affect my blood counts too much as this will put me at much higher risk of infection, and if I were to catch something then this would delay my transplant unnecessarily. So, really, its just a balancing act at the moment until we get more information.

Whilst we are waiting around I have been undergoing a number of tests to make sure that my body is in full working order for when the transplant does take place. On Monday I had a heart scan, which consisted of receiving a radioactive injection before they traced my heart in a scanner for 15 minutes. I had a heart scan back in June, and I can tell you that that did not go terribly well - it was the day after my first lumber puncture, and the injection ended up making me sick and I was left with an awful migraine for about 3 or 4 days. However, it went much more successfully this time! I had no reactions to the injection and it was all over very quickly, thank goodness.

On Tuesday I had a visit to the dentist. So far I have been lucky in my treatment and I have not had any problems with my mouth. I went through a period of everything tasting of metal, and everything still to this day tastes very salty, but other than that, I have been very lucky - many people suffer with ulcers to the point that they cannot eat anything at all as it is too painful. However, I could have all of this yet to come! So, it was important to see the dentist to make sure any major problems were fixed before my transplant. I was a little worried about the outcome as I have not been to see a dentist in roughly three years... (naughty, I know)... but other than a little staining the dentist was happy with my teeth. She did make me promise to register to a dentist after treatment is over though...

On Thursday I had to undergo a kidney test. I had another kidney test at the end of August to make sure that I was alright to go ahead with Phase 3 of my treatment, so it was much the same again this time. Simply a radioactive injection followed by taking blood tests throughout the day to measure how quickly the kidneys were getting rid of the radioactivity. This went very smoothly, the only boring part of the day was all the waiting around, but thanks to the Maggies Centre, there is always somewhere comfortable to go with tea and biscuits

Whilst all of this has been going on I've still been enjoying being at home. We had a few days of nice weather last week, so we definitely made the most of it by going on plenty of walks. My favourite of all of these was a trip to Balmedie Beach - the weather was gorgeous, and hardly anyone was there which made it all the more beautiful. Since the hurricane seems to have hit our shores this week I'm glad we made the most of our very short Indian Summer!