So yes, as the title says. I’m still in the heamotology oncology ward and have been for nine days now (except for the one brief evening I was out).

Yesterday we tried to taper me off the antibiotics again. They wanted to release me but I held firm. Sure enough after 12 hours of no antibiotics my system rebelled and my temperature went up to 39 again. We then got me back on the antibiotics, having really only missed a dose.

It took a little while to catch up and last night was a bit tough (sleep in one hour gaps) but today my temperature is normal and so are all of the pulse blood pressure etc.

So still at square one. Today I had a two bag blood transfusion to bring me back up from the four I slipped to. My neutrophils are ok due to the G-CSF. So that’s ok.

The bad news is my platelets. They have continued to stop and we’re at a rather ok 118 before this slide. Yesterday they were at 34 today at 19. Platelets are what help you clot and after a certain point if they drop you can start to randomly bleed, not something I look forward to.

So if they have dropped again tomorrow (and they don’t have much further to go). There will be other tests. One is a bone marrow biopsy, which is very painful. Still needs must if we have to. Other things they are doing is testing for something unpleasant called Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (or HLH). If I had this it means my white cells are gobbling my read and I’d need a stem cell transplant.

Still it might just be Bendamustine and then it would now have been 21 days since I had the dose, the median amount of time for the bloods to drop before they start to recover.

So it’s really a case of hang tough and hope some of my numbers start to rally. I think it’s been a rough week and a half on my body, and hopefully some rest and a few more days will resolve this issue.

On the plus side nothing grows in my blood cultures from an infection process and I have no infection markers so it’s not obviously a bad infection, leaving it most probably a hopefully temporary chemo reaction.

Anyway, hope you are well. Make sure you do something rewarding at the weekend, as I will mostly be lying in my room reading a book.

Keep well.