A busy weekend clearing the study so we can have the carpet laid meant I didn't get chance to redraft anything of my Novel but this evening I have managed to get chapters one and two online:-
Tomorrow I am at the transplant clinic but I couldn't get my usual appointment slot of 10:00, instead I have a later one of 10:45. Given that the time you actually get seen slips more the later you are because of how appointments overrun , I'm expecting quite a delay tomorrow. Add to this the fact I'll need drugs from the pharmacy which is another hour and I'm going to be at the hospital for quite a while tomorrow and again on Thursday when I am having three units of blood which will take about four or five hours. So to cope with this I'm getting prepared for things to keep me occupied. I haven't listened to any of my usual podcasts this week and will take them loaded up on my iPod. I'll have my book with me, The Algebraist by Iain M Banks and as I am getting down to the last 100 pages I'll probably take a slim volume of short stories and a magazine to give some variety and make sure I don't run out. Item one on the agenda with the doc tomorrow will...
The phone rang at 16:45 and I knew it would be the hospital. It was the doctor from the Bone Marrow Transplant unit. My ciclosporin levels were about twice what they want them to be which is caused by the itraconazole anti-fungal medicine I'm taking. My kidneys have coped well with this extra level and I put that down to the fact I've stuck rigidly to the three litres of water a day edict I was given when I came out of hospital. That and the fact I've not drunk alcohol for eight years. Well I think I average about four units per year. So now I have to halve my dose of ciclosporin down to 75mg morning and evening. Things are going to be up in the air for a while with reducing steroids, fluctuating ciclosporin levels, gvhd and blood counts all interacting. Hence going to the clinic every week again after previously dropping to every two weeks.
I'd had this lump by the side of my ear for 12 months or more but just thought it was one of those sebacious cysts people get now and then. I'd had a small one in my neck years ago that the GP had said was just such a cyst and as this one was soft, round edged and mobile I assumed it was another one. In January 2007 I went to the doc's with sinus trouble that I get from time to time and need antibiotics to shift. While the doc was examining me she noticed the lump by my ear and decided to get it checked out and referred me to the hospital. In the time between that referral and my first appointment ( three months away ) the glands in my neck came up as I was having a bit of a winter cold. Well the one gland never went down again. After being poked with various needles etc. the hospital decided the only way to work out what these lumps were was to whip one of them out. So I was in as a day case to have the one in my neck removed under a general anaesthetic. I got the res...
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