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!