Best laid plans

Yesterday was my big day and I was hoping to be able to stream my transplant live. I’m sorry if anyone tried to log on to view it, but I wasn’t fully compos mentis to do anything about it.

I mentioned that my Hickman line wasn’t working, well I had to go down to surgery first thing yesterday morning 8:30 am for them to have a look at it. They decided they couldn’t do anything with the existing line, so had to put a new one on my right side again. I asked if they could give me some kind of sedative to help reduce the pain, which they did for me. I could still feel some discomfort, but it wasn’t as bad.

As soon as I got back up to my room, I was told that the ambulance/taxi was there to take me to Clatterbridge for my Radio Therapy.So off I went in a wheel chair to the taxi and then off to Clatterbridge. I was falling asleep in the taxi, as I hadn’t really recovered from the Hickman Line going in.

I was taken to the Radio Therapy section where I didn’t have to wait too long before going in. As in the previous test I had on Monday, they began too pack me all up so that everything was aligned with the lasers so they could begin the radio therapy. Not long after they had finished packing me, which is the longest part of the procedure I had felt really sick and had to sit up. They got me a bowl to be sick in, but I managed not to actually be sick. Unfortunately they had to complete set up again from the waist up as I had destroyed what they had done. So after the reset I was ready to go again. I felt a little better and just had to go for it and hope that I wasn’t sick. I had the full body radio therapy for about 20 minutes on each side. So I was in there for just over a couple of hours including set up etc.

After being taken back to the Royal Liverpool Hospital via the ambulance taxi again I went back to my room. Nigel was waiting for me as he had completed his extraction. I will post some video and pics that he had taken on another post. He said he felt relatively ok. He had some tingling in his face and arms that they gave him some tablets for, but I think he managed it ok.

It wasn’t long before they brought the stem cells up to be infused into me. It wasn’t how I was expecting. With the last one there was seven bags of yellow liquid (the stem cells) but with this one it was just one bag that looked like blood. i.e. red liquid. Apparently when it is fresh thats what it look like.

I don’t remember it actually going into to as I was totally exhausted and kept falling asleep, probably due to the sedative still that I had earlier during the day. I have a vague recollection of Nigel leaving, but not much and then Charito left later on, but again don’t really remember it as I as out of it.

The next thing I remember is waking up being sick. Which I did a couple of time throughout the night …. oh just remember I through up when Nigel and Charito was here, I think before my stem cells. I remember Charito taking the bowl off me and I know that Nigel was here at the time, so that must have been prior to the stem cells going in. .. I think I was probably sick about three times during the night but can’t be sure.

I’ve managed to have a shower this morning and keep some cereal down (so far) I’m going to try some soup for lunch and see how I get on. At the moment though I feel OK’ish. I’ve just come off the phone from Nigel and a little bit of a moment where I thought I was going to be sick again. Hopefully I will get through this with relative ease, who knows what is to come!

So unfortunately the live feed never happened and to be honest I don’t think this internet connection would be fast enough anyway. So once again sorry if you was waiting to see the exciting STC Live.