I am still in hospital. Two weeks today. Unless you count the one evening out in that period, which was on Thursday the 6th. It was glorious but then followed by a temperature of 40.6 so probably not worth it on balance.

The doctors took me off my antibiotics on Sunday morning, with a hope to getting me out of hospital. No fever on Sunday night or Monday morning, so they were getting comfortable I’d be out yesterday.

Given that my neutrophils were 0.1 at the time, platelets 19 and hb 5.5 I did think they were being optimistic and sure enough yesterday my temperature spiked again and they had to put me on antibiotics once more. Sigh.

After an unpleasant night where my temperature got up to 39.7 I’m now cooling down a bit and contemplating breakfast, which will be porridge. (no fry ups in colchester).

Incidentally they have a scoring system on obvs, so if you have a higher temperature or pulse you get more points. Those equate to more regular obvs. So I was being monitored every two hours which didn’t help with sleep.

I also spoke to Doctor Francis again, the chap who has mainly been looking after me. He wants to take it all back to basics, as I am an unusual case. No obvious sign of infection, no infection markers. No infection being grown in the infection cultures, and yet a huge spike every time antibiotics are discontinued.

So that means more bloods, another CT scan. (Not a fan as the radiation in those is like four years worth of background and I’ve had three this year… Hello secondary cancer.). And another bone marrow biopsy, which is my least pleasant experience to repeat.

Still at least they are taking it seriously now and not thinking it’s just the Bendamustine reaction (which it still might be…).

Hopefully in this week my counts will recover as I am now past the nadir of the blood drops. Recovery should take 14 days from here. I think if they recover the fever might not be such a big thing as my immune system might then have a shot at actually fighting it off.

So anyway all a little depressing but onwards and upwards.

I was also due another chemotherapy dose tomorrow. That won’t happen now as my neutrophils need to be 1.5 and my platelets 75. Also I’m still in hospital. I’ll talk to Doctor Hodson today about it.

So I reckon another week in here at least. I have been video calling the kids, but it’s not the same. It’s the longest I’ve been away from them, by miles. Jo does get to visit most days (although she had four days off due to Grace having a covid swab, it was negative).

So that’s where we are. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed your hugs and your pints yesterday. Make the most of the freedom. :). Below are some photos of what I have been looking at for over a week. I have not left my room in that time. I mean, who would want to. It has everything I need…. 😉