Howdy y’all. Things have certainly progressed since the last blog. I had a brief chat with Doctor Murray, who said we should be more concerned, and then after leaving a message for my nurse specialist I received a call back from my consultant doctor Hodson. We talked about the best way forward and set out a timescale of three weeks.

That night (Tuesday) I don’t sleep well and my oxygen monitor sat at 91. My temperature had been low fever for a few days and my pulse was over 110 resting. So in the morning I went into Ipswich A and E.

Fast forward a day and I am now in sunny Bradford ward and likely to remain in a few days. I have some pneumonia in my left lung and they have started me on iv antibiotics to try and kick this bug that normal antibiotics failed too. The pneumonia is new, not having been there last x-ray two weeks ago, but the rest of the illness is likely the same.

When Doctor Hodson and I spoke he said it wasn’t good to have had this chest issue on and off for four months and have eight rounds of antibiotics and we needed to do something else (this was before I was admitted). He said it was likely my immune system had forgotten how to identify most of the bugs out there so each time they fought them it was as if they were new. He said they were going to look at getting me some immunoglobulin transfusions, which should help. ( They act as a critical part of the immune response by specifically recognizing and binding to particular antigens, such as bacteria or viruses, and aiding in their destruction). These take about 1-4 hours to infuse and then last for four weeks. It means basically getting other people’s immunoglobulins to work for me whilst I can’t make them. We will see how this pans out.

Additionally we talked about recovery length. It turns out they are working on 12-18onths to recover from chemo. I’m currently at 8, so some way to go. Apparently Bendamustine takes longer for the immune system to recover from, and I was originally thinking 6-9.

The ward is nice and the team are lovely,.as always. I’ve not been in this particular ward, but have my own room, so that’s good. It even has a window. So taking it easy, and hoping to kick pneumonia soon. Hope you are all well.