True perfection has to be imperfect.

I'm out! I got home before 1700 on Monday. It felt amazing and Bamboleo went crazy! I think the doctors would have liked me to stay another day (Baby if you've got to go away, don't think I can take the pain...) but my blood counts on Sunday were good (Good day all round after Andy came to visit. After five years of not seeing a mate there's quite a bit to talk about!) and when the doctor came into my room at about 0930 on Monday morning I was sat in the chair, fully dressed and with my suitcase packed next to me. They realised they weren't going to keep me and so got my discharge drugs and off we went! Seemingly perfect though that day felt (not getting the incredibly attractive Spanish doctor's number would be the imperfection here), this blog is actually about the NHS.

It's grossly under funded, mismanaged and riddled with bureaucracy. There can be long waiting times, bed blocking and too much admin for staff. The resources it does have are often used inefficiently. Doctors and nurses are overstretched, overworked and under paid.

And yet the NHS is the single greatest institution that is or has ever been. We as British citizens are immeasureably lucky to have free healthcare. Whether you need life-saving heart surgery at hospital, support with mental health from a psychiatrist or antibiotics from the sexual health clinic after sleeping with a dirty girl on a stag do in Amsterdam, it's all provided for. 

The NHS saves and dramatically improves countless numbers of lives every year. The money invested into research at our hospitals is helping to cure diseases, make lives so much more manageable and will continue to do so for as long as the NHS exists. Millions of us and our loved ones would not be alive today were it not for free health care, me included.

Our nurses and doctors work incredibly hard. They are under paid for the hours they are meant to work and most of the time they work longer shifts than they are paid for. The job is a vocation, very few on the front line staff are there purely for the money. Emotionally it must be a very draining job, they are caring for people often during the worst times of the patient's life. And yet they remain so positive, upbeat and friendly. The power of a smile is a wonderful thing, whenever you feel down, whether it be through ill health, a rubbish day at work or because Sunderland have lost (Again!), a caring smile is sure to make you feel comforted and the nurses always provide that smile.

The junior doctors strike has my full backing. Without them the NHS would collapse. A junior doctor is not necessarily somebody straight out of university, doctors need about 10 years on the job experience before they become registrars. And junior doctors will never leave a critical care ward unmanned even during a strike. Of course the numbers are fewer but they know how important their job is and so they effectively draw straws to decide who will provide cover. They are sacrificing the opportunity to demand what they are entitled to for the sake of patient care. This gets very little media coverage, unfairly so.

Very few of us can afford private health care, most of us are fully dependent on the NHS should something arise. (After nearly 3 weeks in hospital I could barely afford free healthcare. Retail therapy is a great way of passing time, I must have spent about £400 (Credit card!) on completely unnecessary purchases. I like to think that's my way of giving back to the economy.)  I'm not about to start campaigning for any political party. (My dad does enough of that. He's one of those annoying people who come election time post leaflets through your front door. He is very interested in and passionate about politics but I'm sure he only does it for the piss up afterwards. He'll say he's going leafleting on a Saturday morning and come about 2300 in the evening he rolls in absolutely smashed. It's also his birthday today, Happy Birthday Pops!) But I do believe health care is one of the most important government policies and whichever party pledges to best support the NHS will go a long way to securing my vote. (I accept this is a thinly veiled big up to the Labour Party. I realise Corbyn is a bit of a liability but Cameron and Osborne are far worse. And anyway, I live in Sunderland, the Labour Party could include the decapitation of ugly children in its next manifesto and it would probably still win our seat.)

Finally, the saying goes there's an exception which proves every rule. In this case that exception is my mam. (The rest of this paragraph is pretty soppy so feel free to move on to the next. I did consider writing a full blog about her titled Tribute so really you've all got off lightly!) I wouldn't have made it through the last three weeks nor indeed the last two years without her. I'm 24 and at times have been no less reliant on her than at any other point in my life. I tell her this every day and I'd like to say publicly, 'Mum, you're amazing. Thank you.'

So the transplant is done and I'm home. The hard work is out of the way. In the coming months I will get stronger and stronger. The doctors advised I rest for a little while but nobody ever got anywhere by just sitting around. (Definitely went for a swim this morning.) A big thank you for all the messages of support, best wishes, thoughts and prayers Clearly they have all helped!

Miracle Drug

The downside to being on a completely new treatment, a trial of sorts, is that you have no idea of what to expect. One of the lads (Dr Heavey) warned me the chemo would be tough. And indeed it has been. One of the nurses on the ward said that the chemo required when having a bone marrow transplant is as brutal as it comes. (I must point out, a bone marrow transplant, especially when it is your own stem cells, as in my case, is one of the simplest transplants. If transplant severity equated to leading characters in Friends then a bone marrow transplant would probably be Phoebe. Got to be in there but doesn't do a awful lot.) I escaped the process of getting the chemo into me fairly lightly. A little bit of sickness and that was it. The drug has a ripple effect though. Once it's in you it destroys what feels like everything in your body. The bone marrow is where it really takes hold. For a period you lose the ability to produce white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. The result is your body is wide open to infection and you feel indescribably weak. All that gets you through is that you know it's for 'the greater good'. (A quote from Hot Fuzz which has been on twice now during my stay. What a film, if Nick Frost attempting to jump over the garden fence doesn't make you smile then you need to have a beer and cheer up.)

So faced with this uncertainty you have no option but to go into it blindly. (More easily done in my case.) I came into this treatment with naive optimism. In my dream world I thought I'd be in hospital for a couple of weeks and then leave cured of MS, a miracle drug of sorts. (Actually I'm not quite that stupid but I was hopeful!) Although no less significant the reality is much different. It'll take a few months for me to rebuild my strength and for the transplant to take its effects. (The registrar this morning said having a bone marrow transplant basically means I need to grow a new organ.) I'm sure this will frustrate me but it will be the polar opposite to the previous 23 months. Then as each week went by I became weaker, now as each day goes by I will become stronger. This will be exciting and rewarding, I'll find joy in being able to do things I previously could not. (On leaving hospital, not pissing into a bottle will be the first such thing. Nurses are mad keen on urine, I'm sure it must be a prerequisite of the job.) It'll be a gift that keeps on giving, much like Bamboleo whom I am missing greatly. (Though he wasn't a gift, he cost me £600 and he'd do well to remember that when he's acting the idiot.)

At the end of my last blog I had a temperature from an unidentified virus. (I know, were this blog a book, a page turner it is not.) I've since had a blood transfusion, two platelet transfusions (Both much less dramatic than they sound.) and a CT scan of my head and chest. The doctors concluded I had an infection, possibly from the Hickman line I had in my chest so that was removed and I am on to some antibiotics. I also had a large, black thing on the top of my head. Something between a wound and a spot. Attractive. I am on some different antibiotics for that and thankfully it is going as it really hurt. (And looked horrible!)

From early Tuesday morning it was a very rough 72 hours but things are seemingly on the up. Today my white blood count is up to 0.9. The average, un-chemo-ed (fairly certain that's a word) person has a count of between 60 and 100 but I don't care because once I hit 1 I can stop wearing my silly mask whenever I leave my room. (And anybody who brags about their blood counts clearly has little man syndrome anyway.)

Also once I hit a count of one and go a few days without a spike in temperature I can be released! Touchwood I will be out in the early part of the coming week. I say touchwood which is ridiculous. My grandad used to say it, increasingly so as he got older and more unwell, I seem to have adopted the habit over the last week, maybe it's a hospital thing? He wasn't satisfied just touching some wood as he said it though. As he neared death he was punching holes into anything that even resembled wood whenever he said it. I'm not superstitious in the slightest, I quite like the number 13, I'd walk under a ladder and I'd even pick up a spoon that I had dropped. (Abbe!)

So does a miracle drug exist? Define miracle.  In six, nine months down the line I will be so much healthier, stronger and happier than I have been in over two years (Touchwood!) and that will feel like a miracle. And hopefully in a few days time I will be back home, and so will that!

Does the body rule the mind or doors then mind rule the body? I dunno...

Morrissey might not but I know it's the latter. (He was probably off his face for most of the 90s, I'm in a much better state to judge.) This was always going to be a battle with the mind for me. The doctors are telling me it's day six (post transplant). Bollocks to that, I arrived here a fortnight ago, it's day thirteen. They can throw all the medical jargon they want at me (Neutropenic this and blood count that.) but I know I'm ready to go home. They might have the qualifications but I've seen enough Scrubs to know I'm fine.

I'm trying to keep myself busy but being confined to a room is difficult. Reading would be a good way to pass time but I'm missing a few vital qualities to be able to do this. Namely sufficient eyesight, the dexterity to hold a book let alone turn a page and of course a concentration span. I've been pondering over my Desert Island Discs but until my eclectic mix of wit, humour and sarcasm brings the stardom it deserves this is a bit pointless. I'm fortunate to know people in high places at Sky TV (one person actually, thanks Andy!) and so I have access to all of Sky Movies and Sports on my iPad. Again though the absence of a concentration span diminishes this perk. And so my main past time is whingeing to my mam that I want to go home and eating. And writing this blog of course but as I'm sure you can tell, I'm running out of things to say! (Maybe I'll start making things up? Next blog I'll tell you about the three ninjas and a dragon I fought off last night.)

My Monday afternoon was significantly improved by the unexpected visit of the fabulously glamorous and devilishly handsome Lynne and Ernie respectively. My parents know them through church but I met them at the coffee shop I go to. A lovely couple and it was an extremely generous gesture for them to come.

Egg on face time! And I'm talking about raw, out of date eggs. I began writing this blog on Monday. In my mind I was ready to leave hospital. Fast forward to 0145 Tuesday morning and I was in A Whole New World. (And not that class one Aladdin found on his magic carpet. This one was somewhere between limbo and hell.) In short, I had a temperature. It spiked at over 40° C. With no immune system how such a fever manifests itself isn't pretty. For about the next 12 hours, I threw up, occasionally sweated and most of all I shivered. My mam compared it to a scene from The Exorcist. I was shivering and shaking so much the bed was banging on the walls and the nurses put the handles up on the side of the bed so I didn't fall out onto the floor. The doctors and nurses promised me this would happen and so it became a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

I still have a temperature and don't feel particularly well (Terrible actually.) but at least it's started. I'm not really sure what the message of this blog is. Maybe Morrissey was right and sometimes the body does rule the mind. I dunno...

Nothing's gunna hurt me with my eyes shut.

The man in the room next to me was released on Friday. He had been in for a few days having being re-admitted after a longer stay on the ward. I was surprised initially because I could hear through the walls that he wasn't well. He had leukaemia. On speaking with the nurse I realised he had been released because there was nothing further the hospital could do for him. He is going to die.

Sometimes life is grim. Cancer is an exceptionally cruel disease. The treatment is nauseating at best and usually much worse. And depending on the type of cancer, you are far from guaranteed a happy outcome. This doesn't come as a shock to me, people in my family have had the disease and my Nana died from it. I can only hope she didn't suffer like the man next to me was. 

Everyone has in some way been affected by cancer. Yet still on Friday morning I felt naive, stupid even. I hadn't even spoken to the man, he is nothing but a stranger to me. But the news of his fate really shook me. (Chemo by the way can pull down your mood, I'm not soft or anything, I mean I don't cry at most films!) (Although the first time I saw The Lion King I had to be taken out of the cinema because I was crying so much when Mufasa died. Scar was a bastard.)

Unless directly exposed to them, we are blind to the injustice of life. You have to be, any kind hearted person couldn't function otherwise. But this experience has taught me that life is a gift, not a right. We should treasure it and live it to its fullest. (Maybe I should join the priesthood? I haven't had sex for a while and this is sounding very preachy!)

I'm pleased we have our own separate rooms on this haematology ward. Most people here have leukaemia (cancer of the blood). All are unwell and some are dying. Throughout the last two years I have never felt unwell with MS. I have felt weak, demoralised and humiliated but not unwell. I feel slightly fraudulent being here. The treatments we are receiving are no less dangerous, many on the ward won't be having a transplant at all. The difference is my treatment is life defining, theirs is life deciding. Given the conditions we have we are all fortunate to be here but I feel especially so.

I began writing this blog on Friday morning. The man next door was never released. He was clearly too unwell to go home and presumably they could not find him a bed at a hospice. I think he died in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Life is finite and we spend so much of it worrying about the most insignificant of things. (I've lost my hair after the first stage of chemo a few weeks ago. I don't look nearly as good with a bald head as Natalie Portman did in V For Vendetta and this disappoints me. Doesn't surprise me like, after all I never looked nearly as good with hair as Natalie Portman in Black Swan!) As long as we and those we love our safe, healthy and happy then we should be grateful.

This has been a bit of a gloomy read and I think part of appreciating life is to laugh so I'll leave you with a joke.

Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks. They charged one and let the other one off.

(Copyright Tommy Cooper.)

What are you waiting for?

Allow me some pop music, I'm not well! And even though she divides opinion, I think Ellie Goulding is fit.

The good news is I've had the transplant and all went well. It was no different to getting anything through an IV drip. They defrosted the bags of my stem cells and put them back in me. The only unpleasant part of it is that the preservative the stem cells are frozen in stinks of sweetcorn. As a result, I and my room now stink of sweetcorn for a couple of days. Good job I'm not a puff and I know BBQs are for meat and not corn on the cob because I'll be avoiding sweetcorn for a while!

The chemo is starting to take its effects. I've been lucky so far and I just feel tired. Very tired. My biggest problem is feeding myself. In my last blog I said what makes you bad makes you better. Actually, what makes you bad makes you worse then makes you better! My tremors are horrendous, I feel like I've sparred with Mike Tyson just brushing my teeth. Getting food from a plate into my mouth therefore is difficult. I've  already lost some weight and anyone who's seen me knows there's not that much to lose! (Only in comparison to you John and the ever shrinking skinny Quegan!)

Reinforcements have therefore been called. My mam (the angel that she is) is coming down today so she can help to feed me! I've insisted on my independency for the last two years to the point of spilling, throwing, smashing and falling but I'm now past the point of embarrassment. The more I eat, the stronger I will get and the quicker I will get out of here. I've also been given more menus. I eat a healthy and varied diet so the standard menu of pie and chips didn't really suit me. (Strange, I used to eat plain food only. I also used to be about two stone overweight!) I've now got the kosher, Indian and North African menus. So really I'm going to be hand fed curry for the next fortnight, it's not all bad!

Two years ago I wouldn't take a paracetamol if I had a migraine. Now, they're giving me about 20 tablets a day and I'm on an IV drip of antibiotics three times a day. I don't like it but I know I need it. From the chemo I'm currently Neutropenic. That means my white blood cell count is dangerously low so I'm wide open to infection. I have to wear a mask over my mouth and nose to wade off airborne bacteria. I look a bit like a Japanese tourist walking around London with a SARS mask! I like to think I'm a duck with a beak. Quack.

So now it's a case of waiting. I've had the treatment, had the transplant and now need to sit here until my blood counts return to a normal level. About two weeks. The nurses have told me having a transplant is a bit like planting a seed. It takes time for the effects to become recognisable so I will see no improvement quickly. I'm quite impatient and have never been a horticulturalist so we'll see how this goes!

I'm bored so this has been a bit of a ramble. As a thank you for reading, I will leave you all (especially the blokes) with some life advice. Do whatever you can to avoid having a catheter put in you. On Sunday when I had the temperature and fell over they told me I couldn't leave my bed. Man's got to wee so I needed a catheter. (If you're eating you probably want to stop reading now!) A thin plastic tube is inserted into the penis, up to the bladder and then inflated. You then dribble piss what feels like constantly into a plastic container at the side of you! It was the single most uncomfortable experience of my life and it lasted less than two hours before I told them to take it out. I've fallen plenty of times now and none have hurt like that so if the choice was to fall going to the toilet or sit with that in all day i'd take the fall every time! Between this, the oral tablets, the daily temperature check and thermometer in my ear, the nose swabs to check for MRSA and not forgetting The Bullet experience at the sperm bank, I've had something put into every orifice of my body now. I didn't like hospitals beforehand and I sure as hell don't like them now!

A massive thank you for all the messages of support. I haven't replied because I'm too sleepy but everyone is a morale boost and is helping me through this. Much love!

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Don't stop it'll soon be here. It'll be here better than before.

I'm writing this on day minus one. Today is a rest day. The previous four days I have had chemotherapy and ATG for the last three. I've been on a 24 hour drip for the last 100 hours. Tomorrow is day zero. Transplant day.

I feel pretty worn out already and have been warned the next week will be much harder. All of my symptoms are currently worse and I'm scared but what makes you bad makes you better. I'm nearly there and just need to keep thinking about tomorrow. (Well a couple of weeks anyway.

A very short blog (Size isn't everything, see final paragraph.), no humour and not particularly uplifting but I thought I'd give you all an update. Plus it's a great lyric from Fleetwood Mac.

(Okay, one funny story. I fell over in the shower yesterday morning. I had a temperature and fever from the ATG. There were two nurses who came to help me up (eventually), a black lady and a Filipino man who kept calling me his darling. Not to stereotype, but stark bollock naked as I was, I imagine he thought. 'Wow, that massive!', while she thought, 'Wow, that's tiny!')