The day after my last appointment I started feeling a bit under the weather. I didn't think much of it since I'd been getting on really well for a number of weeks now and I thought that one day feeling not so well wouldn't be so bad. Okay, so I had a very slight temperature, but this wasn't the first time it had happened.

When I woke up the next morning still feeling pretty rough with a temperature I started worrying a little especially as my appetite had diminished somewhat. I called the hospital to tell them about the situation but they didn't seem too concerned about me, and said to just watch what happens. My appetite continued to diminish over the day and I was starting to feel even weaker.

Thursday was still more of the same, although I was eating even less then before and feeling even weaker than before too. I was beginning to feel quite tired through the day, which was very unusual. I really didn't want to go back to hospital, but if I was to continue to feel like this there was only one thing to do. I would leave it one more day hoping that I could ride the temperature out.

By Friday I was feeling totally rough. I hadn't eaten properly for a couple of days, and I was now feeling very week. I couldn't stand up for long periods of time, and would get nauseous if I did. I called up the hospital to tell them that I was going to come in because of how I was feeling, and was put through to a doctor who went through a set of routine questions in preparation for an accident and emergency admission. My brother Mike drove me to the hospital where I signed in at A&E, and waited for the doctor on call. The doctor came and had to ask me a whole series of questions to build up my medical history. I was feeling really lousy and lethargic at this point. They took some more blood tests and waited for the results before coming back to me to say that there wasn't anything out of the ordinary with my bloods; that they looked fine. They may have looked fine but were already showing signs of dropping. As they could see no real danger they released me back home with some antibiotic. I was pretty relieved to get out of there but worried that they had not really got to the bottom of the problem.

I was proved right in the evening when I threw up all my dinner along with the cyclosporine which tasted extremely rough. I spent half the night trying to get rid of the foul aftertaste that was left as I was unable to sleep properly. The next morning I threw up my breakfast too, so called the hospital again to let them know I'd be coming in again. Once again it was through an A&E admission that I went back to hospital, except this time I was put back on Dacie ward - room 10 right down the bottom of the ward. What a way to come back, I couldn't even walk, let alone hold my head up straight, so I was wheeled in on a push chair. Five days earlier I had been full of beans when I visited the ward, and today I was unable to walk in.

Although I couldn't really eat I still tried but ended up throwing up what soup I managed to swallow. Sunday morning was pretty much the same when I threw up all my breakfast. I didn't eat for the rest of the day. I was getting quite concerned as to how my health could deteriorate so rapidly without the doctors having any really idea of what it could be. Everyone was saying that I could be some graft vs. host in my stomach. The blood results showed a further drop in my levels which was also concerning as there was no clear explanation for that. My haemoglobin fell to 8.6 so I was given a blood transfusion and also attached to a fluid drip to help regain some fluid I had lost to dehydration. The blood did help me feel a bit better but I was still feeling pretty lousy, and more importantly still relatively unable to eat.

On Monday, I didn't throw up, but there wasn't much to throw up as by this point I hadn't eaten a proper meal in several days. The doctors still weren't sure as to why I had fallen I'll and were still hypothesising on some form of GVH. They wanted to send me of for an endoscopy on my stomach which would shed some light as to whether this was GVH or something else.

On Tuesday I was told the endoscopy would be on Thursday, which meant I had to hang around the hospital room for another two days bored out my head. This visit back to hospital was even worse than the first one, not least as I knew what to expect from the vile cuisine, but as there were no visitors or family during the day to keep me company. Time certainly passed at a trickle. By the evening I was wondering what had happened to my cyclosporine levels as no-one had motioned anything about it. In asking I found out by chance that indeed the levels were too high at 283. I was pretty upset when I found this out. Suddenly it all seemed to make sense. I remember back in my first week away from hospital when I overdosed a little on the cyclosporine I also had stomach cramps and felt unwell for most of the day. That time I realised I had overdosed and could remedy it, whereas this time no-one had told me so I had continued to take the drug even though my levels were already too high. My symptoms were just more pronounced than before as I was continuing to poison my self instead of laying off or reducing the dosage.

Needless to say I didn't have to take the drug for a whole day and when I was due to restart it would be at the lower level of 75mg twice a day. The next morning I felt markedly better. I was able to eat something for a change and finish it for the first time in a week. If this was the cause for my brief re-internment back at Dacie then I wanted out again. As far as I was concerned the less time on ward and the more at home the better. I could at least get some decent nutrition at home and have a bit of life too. When my doctor came round on her ward, as I was feeling alot better I asked if I could go home. Although there was an andoscopy booked my condition had improved enough for the doctors to agree. I was excited to leave, but as I left the hospital, I couldn't help feeling that the whole episode could have been avoided if I had received a call telling me to reduce the cyclosporine dosage earlier on that week.