The Holiday's over.

Evening all,

The holiday is well and truly over and as promised I'm back in hospital. Not in my luxury apartment in the Bone Marrow Unit either unfortunately and I now need to share a 4 bed bay with 3 other blokes! Given that I'm supposed to be at risk of infection and had been kept in isolation previously, then having been so careful whilst I've been at home I have to question in my mind whether this is putting me at risk? I think things over the coming days are gonna be tougher so I'm glad as always I have plenty to do.

One plus is that I can now see the Leicester Tigers ground from my window (but unfortunately not the pitch), so my plan of deploying my Northampton Saints flag in the window to wind up the natives may well get executed in the morning. It certainly will on match days and as they are at home to Harlequins on Saturday afternoon the plan will be executed no later than Saturday morning!

It's been another very long day, hence the lateness of this blog.

With the boys dropped off with our next door neighbour first thing this morning we made good time to Leicester and were at the reception early by 8.15. A wait ensued and I was finally taken to a bed in the Haematology day unit an hour later. News on when treatment was due to start was thin on the ground but I did manage to establish that I was going to be admitted after the lumbar puncture, so as nothing had started by 11am, Andrea made her way home and a text at 11.45 confirmed she'd got home safely.

I was finally taken to the treatment room about 12.30 and the treatment began after going through all the formalities of briefing and consent forms and was over by 1pm. In actual fact the treatment was straightforward and nothing in comparison to the two Bone Marrow Biopsies I've had. A fine needle was inserted between two vertebrae in my lower back (after a local anaesthetic) and after drawing off some of the spinal fluids a dose of chemotherapy was injected through the same needle.

The only drawback from the treatment was that for the next 2 hours I had to lay still on my back which, by the time the treatment was over, meant 3 o'clock.

All of this took place in the day unit which meant that with the exception of those of us having the lumbar punctures who had beds, loads of outpatients were in and out in the chairs around me all day coming for various treatments. I got talking to some of them and found they had a variety of conditions, primarily Lymphoma.

By the end of the day there was only me and a young guy left and we were both waiting to be admitted to the Haematology Ward. We got talking and I found that he has exactly the same condition as me and is on his third course of chemotherapy. He's only 20 years old which backs up the fact that this condition is a young persons, even childhood condition. From speaking to him it sounds like he's been through some rough patches during his treatment, even when he went through the stage I'm at, and one of the drugs I've been OK with reacted against him. Once again I get the impression my experience so far has been relatively trouble free and hope it continues that way.

Tonight could be interesting and a new experience having to share a bay with others. Hopefully I will sleep well and there'll be no drama's overnight but I think a sleeping tablet will definitely be required.

I'll report how it went in the morning.

Thanks again for reading.