Once again, I drove to the Hospital for the Thursday appointment with Dad, only to find that the whole of the outpatients clinic was full. That's not a good sign, since this usually means waiting for about two to three hours for the appointment. However I met two other patients who were undergoing a bone marrow transplant at the same as me, Richard and Steven, who were two and three weeks ahead of me respectively. Both Richard and Steven had had 100%matched sibling transplants, whereas in my case it was an mismatched unrelated donor (M-MUD). Still we had all gone through pretty much the same process. The protocol for related sibling transplants is slightly different in that their treatment begins on a Thursday and mine began on a Tuesday. The difference is that M-MUD's (or MUD's as they're more commonly known as) get the Campath as pre-chemo and the related matches don't. The other slight difference is that MUD's get three doses of methotrexate post-BMT and the related matches get an extra fourth dose. It was a bit like veterans who had just returned from action, withered and frail comparing their experiences. Apart from the lack of hair, post-BMT patients are usually very easy to identify. We all were woollen caps as our bonces are so cold, and we all look like we're wearing clothes that are two sizes to big. We'd all lost around 2st or 10 - 12kg from the op and were looking quite skinny.

At least the time passed quicker, but it was well over an hour before my bloods were taken, and then another hour till the appointment. We saw Dr. Kanfer again who went through the usual checklist of diarrhoea, nausea, stomach pains, vomiting. As usual I was fine in those respects, but I still have to deal with the wretching occasionally which I've become quite accustomed to, and is frankly not serious at all. The only other complaint I could add is that occasionally my eyes feel a little sore and sting occasionally like after swimming without goggles. The doctor reckons that this is a little more GVHD, although sub-clinical as he termed it, meaning that it doesn't require hospitalisation to treat.

My bloods have improved slightly with the white count increasing from 1.3 to 1.6 and the neutrophils rising to 1.13 from 0.82. The platelets have crept down a little to 113 and the haemoglobin has also fallen a little to 10.1, but these decreases are nothing serious. The only extra requirement was that I take some magnesium to revive my levels that were depleting due to the cyclosporine, so I've been prescribed 36ml of magnesium per day. Also I was told to lay off the cyclosporine for a whole day as the cyclosporine levels in the blood were a bit high. When I restart the pills tomorrow I'm also to take 100mg instead of 150mg. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's better, but the cyclosporine levels need to be maintained within a certain range, and the current dose has raised the levels over the upper limit.

The doctor also hinted that if next week's blood continue to show the same level of progress and I'm still feeling as good, then the biweekly visits can then be reduced to weekly visits. So things appear to still be going in the right direction. When Dad went to get the prescription, I popped down to Dacie ward to say hi and make a milkshake as by that time I'd gone without food for several hours and was feeling very hungry. Well by the time we got home, I wasn't feeling too good in the tummy and soon found myself over the toilet trying to expel what was in my stomach. For a while nothing came out and then what can only be described as having the texture of hard curdled lumps of creme caramel came out, or more precisely had to be forced out. It seemed as though the milk had been digested and the milkshake powder had dried out and formed this thing. As usual, once I had cleared the stomach everything was fine. It looks like I've sussed out the diet of the supermodels, as I'm becoming quite adept at inducing wretching on demand.