Blood

Rose and I passed a pleasant night, and she accompanied me to ambicare for a half an hour before leaving to go home and spare some love for Brandy, who has not had much company these last couple of days :(

I got my chemo drug, and then received two units of blood. It takes a couple of hours for each bag to go through, so I was tied up there right until kickoff between England and Scotland!

My health is slowly but surely deteriorating as a result of the chemo. I still get head pain, but rather than a headache in the classical sense, I get pain when straining or bending. This is certainly linked to the intrathecal procedures I have each week. My counts are all coming down; you already know I have low haemoglobin (anaemia), but now my platelets have dropped below 50 (these cause blood to clot, normal is 150+ I think), and my neutrophils are down to 1.6 (White cells that fight infection - neutropenia is less than 0.5, normal 4+). Because my platelets are low I have to be careful of nose bleeds, and I get other slight bleeding (where then sun don't shine). On the plus side, I don't have to self-inject the fragmin anymore. They will probably have to give me platelets and other plasma products before my next intrathecal; I have been here before!

My leg continues to improve, as does my walking as you might expect. Let us hope all the infection was killed last time - remember, I am an optimist :)

The rugby was a bit disappointing. England were by far the better team, but a combination of real endeavour by the Scots and a lackadaisical forward performance in the loose by England kept Scotland in the game. We could/should have had 2 more tries. Their try was a flash of brilliance/luck that could not be repeated in many attempts. Still, I give great credit to them man for trying it. Haskell was deservedly man of the match.

Here is the picture I promised you yesterday, of my lunch with Marilyn and Raksha







Today, I had pizza for dinner, in case you were wondering!


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