Author: Phillip Branch

I wasn’t feeling that great due to previous night but today is the big day.  I received 4 bags of Nicole’s stem cells over a period of an hour.  Each bag had to be defrosted, after being taken out of liquid nitrogen, be being placed in warm water.  The cells are then heated up going through a blood warmer and then infused via my PICC line. 

The cells are presevered with sulphar.  As a result I stink for 3 days as the sulphar leaves my body.

No problems, very uneventful which is what was expected.

Many thanks to Nicole for her gift.

Bad night Monday 13th. I must have had some reaction to a drug,threw up 15 times and had severe stomach pains. This happened over a period of 5 hours. Thank god that’s over. Can’t wait to see what happens next – NOT.

Just about to start my second day of post-radiation chemo and juice to help with the stem cells, at least it is something like that as I am not really paying much attention lately as to what they are pumping into me.  For this procedure I am hooked up to the pump for 24 hours a day for a total of 48 hours of pump time over two days.  Most of that time I am getting fluids to pump the crap out of my bladder.  Very boring and by being tethered to the pump for so long I feel more trapped in here than before if that is possible.  At least I feel OK except for the lousy air-conditioning – it is a bit too warm in here.

The first two days of radiotherapy have finished.  I was a bit tired at the end of the first day.  Today I am feeling fine.

The radiotherapy is done in the early morning and the afternoon.  I have to lie on a bed with my feet up on a ledge.  Bags of stuff are packed down the side of me against panels against either shoulder.  I then lie there like a sardine for 40 minutes.  Twenty minutes on one side, the bed is then rotated around 180 degrees and I get zapped on my other side.  I feel nothing during the whole procedure except beeing a bit sore from being perfectly still for so long.

I have experienced no nausea etc so far from the radiotherapy.

I also had a lumbar puncuture on wednesday at lunchtime.  This is much like an epidural.  I lie on my side on the bed in fetal position.  A shot of local anaesthetic and a needle into the spine.  As usual I felt a bit faint etc but that is my normal reaction to needles – there was no pain.  The worst part was having to lie on my back for two hours without moving much in order prevent a headache etc.  I was a bit shagged after that.

After this mornings radiotherapy I had my pentamidine inhalation.  This stuff is to prevent pneumocystis pneumonia.  I sat in a closed room and inhaled the stuff for about 20 minutes.  No problems there.

One more day of radiotherapy and then two days of chemo.  I then have a day off and get Nicoles stem cells on Tuesday.

By the way, I am in big room shown in a earlier blog entry here.

The teeth are going OK. Some of the other teeth next to the wisdom teeth holes are a bit sore, feels like the other teeth are pressing on them. Must be because my teeth are packed hard together and now there is some space to move? I see the dentist again tomorrow so will see what the expert opinion is.
One thing I have noticed – it is difficult getting all the food out of the wisdom teeth holes. A couple times I have rinsed my mouth and food from earlier in the day is still there despite the fact I thought I did a good job earlier of rinsing the holes.

I am going back into hospital on the 7th of July for a week of preparation for the Stem Cell Transplant.  This involves 3 days of radiation therapy and 2 days of chemotherapy.  It is expected that I will then get my sister’s stem cells on the 14th of July.  Expectation is that I will be in hospital for around 4-5 weeks.  Fingers crossed I can get out early.

Will keep you posted.

I had my wisdom teeth removed on Friday.  It was a painless procedure.  A little bit of swelling but no problems the next day.  My eyes are a bit bloodshot in the photo, must have been the anaesthetic.  The anaesthetic is different to the bone marrow biopsy anaesthetic, I can feel myself going under with this anaesthetic and I was rather groggy for a while after waking up.

Got the results from the bone marrow biopsy yesterday.  I am still in remission which means the transplant is on track for the 7th of July.

Tomorrow I have my wisdom teeth removed.

A busy week this week.

Had my bone marrow biopsy on monday.  Nothing unusual happened.

On Tuesday I had the Total Body Irradiation Planning (TBI to us pros).  I will be getting three days of irradiation when I go back to hospital in two weeks, 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening.  The planning consists of me having a CT scan while laying down with my arms crossed, legs up, and bags stuffed next to me.  This is used to work out how where to stick the lead shielding so that I get a nice even dose and to protect my lungs and kidneys.  Apparently there is a 5% mortality rate from this

Today I had the dental review, ECG, and lung function test.

The dentist found a few spots of infection in my wisdom teeth (in the gums) and a little spot in a root canal I had cleared out a few years ago.  The infection is minor and is normally not much of a problem but when you have a transplant it can be a major problem.  It can cause an extremely bad infection and I am guessing this could mean something like septic shock in the extreme case?  The upshot of this – out with all four wisdom teeth and a bit of a dig into the root canal to clear out a loose piece of crap.  This bit of fun will take place at the end of next week.  At least it will be done under a general anaesthetic.

The ECG was routine, stick a few sensors on the chest and ankles and let the computer do its thing.  Took all of 5 minutes.

The lung function test was a bit more interesting.  The part I was expecting was OK – blowing into a machine a few times.  I had to blow a bit harder than I expected.  If I blew for much longer I was half expecting a lung to come out.  I had to do this about 10 or 15 times.  Still, not too bad.

The hard part of the lung function test was the first part – a blood sample to see how much oxygen is in my blood.  The blood is not taken from a vein but from an artery a bit further into the meat of my arm.  The needle goes in vertically.  I was OK for a minute or two while the nurse searched around for the artery with the needle, the damn artery would not behave.  Now I should mention that me and needles like this don’t get along – we have a bit of history.  I can handle taking blood in the usual manner, even with a bit of ‘searching’ and you can give me a flu jab etc with no problems.  When it comes to extended digging or cutting I tend to go all white, feel faint and express the need to have a chunder.  It has happened a few times before when it took five or six attempts to find a vein for a blood test one time and also when they had to poke/dig around a bit when a PICC line was being put in.  It also happened this time.  I came within a nanosecond of chundering.  I broke out into sweat – my shirt ended up covered in sweat.  It was bad.  Fortunately the nurse decided that was enough and gave up.  The nurse then took a tiny sample from the end of my finger much like a diabetic does to check their blood sugar levels.  This was mostly OK although I was still a bit iffy and felt a bit funny.  It did not help that no blood would come out and it took three goes before they also gave up on this.  It could be worse, I could be a Hawthorn supporter hey Kingy

First day of consolidation chemo today.  It took an hour or so to get the first two drugs into me.  There is a two hour gap between these two and the third drug for some reason.  So now I am sitting in the botanic gardens next to the hospital – better than sitting in the hospital.  If I had remembered to bring some cash I could have had a coffee from the bean bar.

The third drug will take four (4) hours to pump into me 

I had my bone marrow biopsy on monday.  On wednesday I saw my doctor and it appears I am in remission which is good – I don’t have to do the induction chemo again.

Next week I will be doing 4 days of consolidation chemo.  After this it is the big one – the transplant.  It will be in roughly 7 weeks time from today.

Tomorrow I am going home.

Next week I will have a bone marrow biopsy.  There will probably be a couple of other things too such as a gated blood pool scan and an ECG.  This is all in preparation for the first consolidation chemo.

My PICC line has been getting a bit blocked in both directions.  Hopefully it fixes itself soon.

Almost at the magic 0.5 level for the neutrophils. Tomorrow I should be over 0.5 and then I can leave the day after.

My lower back was sore and throbbing for a couple of hours this evening.  Must be the bone marrow going bonkers making white cells.

It is less intense than the bone pain I had when I got daily doses of GCSF (or whatever it is called) for stem cell harvesting.  One night I was in considerable pain for 6 hours.

I had a sore head for about 5 days (21-25 April).  My scalp was sore across the top of my head and covering an area about the size of my hand.  Whenever I moved my hair by running my hand through it I had a sharp pain in the hair folicles.  It also made sleeping rather painful too due to the constant rubbing of the pillow on my hair.  Now the hair is gone I am pain free and can sleep.  This has the doctors a bit baffled as to what was causing it.