The evening of my last update (day 15) I made mistake of drinking some fruit juice. As the throat was slowly improving (becoming less painful) I thought some juice would be tasty. However I picked the pineapple juice instead of the apple juice and stung the back of my throat due to the acid in the drink. The throat felt on fire for a few minutes and that horrible painful feeling came back when swallowing. If that was not enough I had to throw up yet again all the liquid there was in the stomach. At least I felt better after that. Lesson learned, no heroics, just take things slowly and be patient although that's always hard for me to do.

The next morning (day 16) the throat felt pretty sore, so the morphine dosage was increased a little back to 1.5 ml per hour. Once again I spent most of the day in bed either dreaming or talking to people who I thought were in the room that weren't. I did manage to eat some weetabix with painkillers (a bit of a step back) with a cup of tea. My stomach must shrunk a lot since I wasn't able to finish the breakfast and yet I felt stuffed. Dad made some porridge late in the afternoon but I wasn't able to eat due to the pain. At least that is what I told him...

On day 17 (yesterday) the throat felt better, and managed to have a cup of tea and a some weetabix this time without any painkillers, but I'm still getting my nutrition through the hickman line until I can show the doctors that I'm capable of eating all my meals. The morphine dosage was lowered back down to 1.3 ml per hour. The rash on the hands and feet were starting feel more sensitive than previously, which, I thought could be a sign of an increase in my blood counts. The blood results showed that they had increased ever so slightly in the white blood cell count (WBC), but not enough to make a significant difference. For the first time in weeks it is now becoming possible to drink more than one mouthful of water. This is something I never imagined I'd appreciate, but it feels so liberating just to be able to drink one cupful of water in a single go without writhing in agony.

However, during the day time I started feeling slightly nauseous every time I stood up. That was a fairly unpleasant feeling as you're not sure whether you are going to be sick or not. Sleeping helped cure this but eventually I had to concede and once again make a offering to the gods of the white clay bowl. I was starting to ask myself if once again it was related to something I may have drunk or an underlying problem.

Today, day 18 post transplant was not too different to yesterday, apart from the reduction in morphine to 1.1 ml per hour. Once again I was able to have the usual breakfast of tea and weetabix without painkillers but I wasn't feeling nauseous. It was suggested that I started exercising a bit, and I can see why. It feels and looks like there has been a fair bit of muscle wastage and as a consequence I'm feeling notably weaker than three weeks ago. I need to make more effort walking around the confines of the room in order to get some basis exersize. The hands and feet are even more sensitive and they were yesterday, and the blood results showed a more definite increase on the day before so the WBC is now 0.1 compared to 0.04 yesterday. Normally this would be between 3 and 10, so there is still a long way to go. That my platelet levels fell by considerably less than they normally could also be a sign of improvement, but I think that tomorrow's results will either confirm or disprove that the engraftment is starting to take effect.

This evening I managed to have a small supper comprising a couple of mouthfuls of vegetable lasagna and 75% of an omelette in addition to some yoghurt. I'm hoping that I can keen this down tonight, as I can use this in my case to have the drip feed lowered significantly.