Week 14 – Wed – Friday 8th Dec.  Steady as she goes!   

Wednesday was a pretty quiet day but I managed to spend half a day at the hospital on Thursday.

I had an early appointment with the infectious diseases doctor at RMH to check in on my lung condition but when I arrived I was told that she was sick herself that day.  However they were keen for me to see someone so I was bumped down the line to see a Registrar, Melissa Lee.  This change only incurred an hour’s extra wait so the paper got read from front to back.

Melissa was concerned about the Voriconazole Level (the drug that’s replacing Ambisome for treating my lung infection) but as my blood results for this drug had not been returned yet there was little she could say other than “we will keep an eye on it” and contact you to follow up.

After that appointment I moved over to Peter Mac to have my Hickman line dressing changed.  This process usually takes about 15 minutes but I had a very chatty nurse who wanted to know all about me and my businesses – extending the process to around 30 minutes!

Melissa was as good as her word and phoned on Friday to say she and Ramona (my infectious diseases consultant) were concerned the Voriconazole level was too low and they wanted me to increase my intake by just 50mg per dosage (twice a day).  Once we sorted this out we then had to adjust the dosage times as it is important to measure the drug level in the blood 12 hours after taking the last dosage.

This meant changing the time of taking the drugs from 5.00pm (they need to be taken an hour before or after eating) to 8.00pm on Friday, then 9.00pm Sat, then 10.00pm Sunday which will place me 12 hours prior to the blood sampling which is usually 10.00am at the hospital.  This now means I will be taking drugs at 5 different time each day!

It simply reinforced to me how precise this side of the medicine is.  When you are undergoing cancer treatment the doctors like to measure everything they can and adjust things accordingly.

Over the last few days Jan and I have continued our exploration of Melbourne with a few good walks and bike rides around the city.  We met up with Jan’s uncle, David Sheridan, who had been tasked with selling our old Prado from Tassie.  This took David a few weeks but he managed to end up with a big bag of cash that he passed over to us.  David is a car enthusiast and has a warehouse full of old cars he is working on.

He also raced Datsuns in the Round Australia Trials in the 1970s.

We have a few visitors lined up for the weekend so I will happily report on that next week.

For now I feel well and things are going well.

I received confirmation from my Transplant Co- Ordinator, Siobhan Mineely, that the Transplant will be delayed by 2 weeks. Chemo starts on Boxing day and the Transplant itself will take place early January.

STOP PRESS!! News just in from Sandy, of red jacket and gold jewellery fame, total money raised from the beanie auction is sitting at $3 300, Many thanks to all who contributed.