Went back to hospital for my first appointment after being discharged from the ward for the second time. It felt much better coming in as a an outpatient again instead of being on ward, but my weight was down somewhat on it's previous reading in outpatients by around 3.5kg. That's how much I lost in during the week I was overdosing on the cyclosporine, which in addition to my overall weight loss from the first six weeks was just under three stone or around 17kg.

After going home I still felt like I had taken a couple of steps backwards. My white blood counts had practically halved, and my appetite had been temporarily altered again, although this was only a short term effect. I was feeling fairly week again, not my usual self so even walking to outpatients was more difficult than before. In all I almost felt like I did about a week after leaving hospital for the first time. I wasn't napping during the day but I didn't feel as though I had much energy.

Dad had already started freaking out with my situation long before he even returned to the UK. He was so paranoid about my weight loss he was nearly in tears. Keeping the weight loss to a minimum is certainly a priority, but Dad was treating as though it was the only mission in life. This caused plenty of friction and stubborn reaction from me because I didn't feel like eating all the time, whereas Dad was constantly putting pieces of chocolate in front of me begging me to eat them. The more I started eating the less paranoid Dad became, but he still felt passionate enough about the topic that on our appointment he asked to see one of the nutritionists.....again! As though we hadn't met enough of them already.

Also of growing concern was the discolouration of my two forefingers. What started off as a tiny blister under my finger nails on both forefingers had spread to what looked like a form of frost bite. Of course it wasn't frost bite, but that's how it appeared. This was worrying me as the tissue did seem to have a necrotic appearance to it and I certainly didn't want to start losing parts of my fingers at this point. The diagnosis seemed fairly simple. I have always had cold sores on my lips, otherwise as known as herpes simplex. As I love picking scabs and dead skin, I have a habit of picking my lips a little and it seems as though I managed to inject the herpes virus into the tips of my fingers and they were going through the same cycle that the lips do when they're infected with the virus.

A brief visit to the dermatologist the following morning confirmed this, and I was prescribed valaciclovir, an anti-viral agent to stop the spread of this virus. It is highly likely that I managed to get the virus into my fingers because my immune system has got a fraction of the antibodies it had before the bone marrow transplant, and therefore whilst I would never have got herpes in my finger before, I'm now susceptible to getting it in other parts of my body so I've got to be a lot more careful about what I pick and touch on my body as I'm at risk of quickly spreading some virus or disease to which I have no antibodies. In the meantime I'll be keeping a close eye on the progress of the herpes in my fingers.

My bloods have been improving slowly with the white cell counts showing the most promise: WBC 2.3, Hb 10.0, Platelets 114 and Neutrophils 1.74.