Hi, everyone! Many thanks (again and again) for all your messages of support. Take away the small matter of leukaemia, and what we have here is some strange guy in London lying in bed all day, watching TV, taking hard drugs and being told by people all around the world what an inspiration he is. Nice.
Had a chat with my consultant Dr. Eduardo Olivaria – he really knows his stuff. Apparently, I am doing extremely well – any infection that caused Saturday’s temperature spike seems to have been almost immediately obliterated by the antibiotics. I also have gotten away with much-better-than-expected nausea/discomfort levels. When, I hear the late-night retching contests from the adjacent cells (rooms), I do feel like I’m having an easy ride. Then again, maybe those fun and games are ahead of me in GVHD land.
Eduardo also mentioned the ‘excellent’ sample of stem cells that Alex donated(thanks Alex for looking after yourself so well) Those stem cells should now have made it to my bone marrow. They will continue dividing over the next 10 days until mature blood cells start spilling out of the marrow and into my blood circulatory system. Exciting, amazing stuff.
From then on I will be watched for GVHD (Graft versus Host Disease)- which is basically my new white blood cells attacking my own body. GVHD can be nasty but with it comes the beneficial GVL (Graft versus Leukaemia) GVL offers another line of attack against any leukaemic cell that survived ALL the chemotherapy and ALL the radiotherapy that I have been subjected to. Get dem suckers!
You know what? Maybe this just might work…
And so to bed.
Milt x
