T + 115 Up with the Lark

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If the phone rings late on a Thursday afternoon and the caller ID shows "unavailable" then it is a reasonable bet that it will be the hospital ringing to adjust my medication. So it proved to be yesterday.

I had a call from one of the Bone Marrow Transplant co-ordinators saying that my ciclosporin levels were a bit high and I needed to skip two doses completely and then resume on a reduced dose of 150mg morning and evening, down from 150 in the morning and 175 in the evening. This was predicted by the doc last week as the itriconazole anti-fungal medication I am taking as part of the steroid therapy causes changes in the ciclosporin levels.

I didn't sleep very well last night. I went to bed around 22:30 and though I drifted off at some point after for a while, I remember being awake at midnight. I had a lot of thoughts running through my head but not in the sense of them mithering me as I very occasionally get when I have a lot on my mind. This was much more like my mind was just active and wanted to play like some excited puppy.

I drifted off again and next woke at 02:00 and again lay there thinking thoughts on all ranges of topics. The next time I woke was 04:00 and I didn't feel I would be getting off to sleep again Indeed at 06:00 I decided it was daft just lying there so I got up, caught the news headlines on Radio 4 and then had a shower. Now it's 07:00 and I'm writing this blog.

This sleep disruption is probably due to the effect of the steroids as they can often affect mental states. I have to say it is not at all an unpleasant feeling , my thought processes were quite engaging once I just relaxed and stopped thinking I should be concentrating on getting to sleep.

Whether I will view this phenomenon quite so kindly by the mid-afternoon remains to be seen.

Haiku Very Much

I've been giving thought to creative writing matters of late and in the early hours of this morning , almost unbidden, the fragments of a haiku poem came into my stream of consciousness.

A haiku is a stylised form of poetry from Japan consisting of just 17 syllables usually split on three lines of five, seven and five syllables respectively. There is a nice explanation of all things "haiku" at the delightfully titled site "In the moonlight a worm".

My own little effort, by the criteria given on that site  and my own judgement is not very good at all, not least because there is no juxtaposition of imagery. The subject, though apposite to my situation is also rather prosaic. However here it is:-

Antibiotics,
flowing through my body with
caring chemistry.

Yes folks this blog has now started inflicting my poems on you. Just blame the drugs.

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