Day 24 – Perseverance

You would think by this stage of the proceedings I would have the routine sorted and that most things would be easily taken in my stride.  Not so!  What I have found is that each day is subtly different and the long hours without any regular sleep can easily take its toll.

Luckily for the last few days I have not blown a major temperature (although I have hovered between 37 and 38 degrees– above which point the team seem to go into orbit). Today I have suffered minor back pain as a throwback from the Lung Bronchoscopy. And I’ve been topped up with two bags of lovely fresh blood (thanks Clucs, Jodie Coles, the Ham boys and all others who have made an effort to donate recently – you are life savers!).

I’ve had a chest X Ray today (which they do in the room)

Plus the usual IV drips, additives every 4 hours or so.

The nutritionists want to  wean me off the TPN so I’m preparing to say “Goodbye” to my Uber eats liquid diet and “Hello” real food again.  We had a long and positive session with head consultant John Seymour who reassured me that at this point in time my recovery is well on track.  The Neutrophil count is slowly climbing, 100% improvement on yesterday up to 0.2 now – a good sign! Of course there are many things that still have to happen but in his words “we may get you home for a few days by the end of the month – just after your bone marrow biopsy – which is set for next Thursday.  This will be the critical decider as to how we move forward with your treatment. You would then have to come back here for more treatment and Chemo but the transplant could be within a month of that”

I have done 6 exercise sessions today, bike, treadmill and walking laps of the ward – mainly because it relieves my back ache but also as it keeps my mind off other matters and helps pass the time (plus is must almost be good for you!) I found continuing with exercise to be very beneficial for my back pain, sitting around in bed was not helping out much at all. Later in the day due to ongoing back pain I tried my first party drug- Endone- although as we go to press no out of body experiences.

So why do I need to persevere?  Simply with the lack of variety in the day and many of the same routines without any sleep the body gets very worn down.  It is extremely difficult to focus on any one matter for more than 5 minutes.  I have found that I really need to take one step at a time and stay focused on the next matter of importance.  I need to persevere just to move from this moment to the next, this matter to the next or this day to the next (although I must say 24 hrs is way beyond my time-frame at present!

And as my mother used to say to me as a child  “Geoffrey you are a persistent little devil.  You will probably go a long way in life”.

It is this perseverance that is now keeping me in life!