That Damned Friday

So on Friday August the 26th my world fell apart.

I woke up and felt exhausted. I just managed to go to the bathroom and disconnect my overnight bag but that was a real effort. My leg was up like a balloon and hurt like hell and I was struggling to breath.

I "bottom bounced" down the stairs and tried making some breakfast but I had no chance. I couldn't work the radio in the kitchen properly as I had little sense of touch in my fingers and in the end I just sat and waited until Ann came down. I was terrified.

I knew I needed help and after a call to my GP surgery calling an ambulance appeared to be the quickest way to get some. They arrived within ten minutes of the 999 call and I was whisked off to the local Casualty department where I was given a thorough going over including various blood tests, X-ray, CT scan, Doppler test and I forget what else.


The conclusions reached at the end of this were that I did have DVT in my groin which, a lump in one of the remaining lymph nodes which was probably cancer and these two together were causing the problem with my leg as both drainage mechanisms were now compromised. My blood was also in a mess because my body was destroying red blood cells faster than my bone marrow could replace them. this shortage of red blood cells was what was causing the shortage of breath and was pretty bad. The normal HG count is 13.0 but mine was 5.9.

Needless to say I was admitted for treatment and I have to say I was damned relieved despite the news that my cancer was probably back.

As regards the blood, I had two units of bblood treated to remove any antibodies that might be contributing to the problem of the destruction of red blood cells followed by a few days of intraveinous steroids and then massive doses of oral steroids until the HG count got up into the 8 - 9 range.

Since I left hospital a couple of weeks later the dosage has dropped from 60MG each day to 20MG but the count is going up very slowly now and seems to have plateaued around 10.5 which isn't bad but does mean my concentration is poor and I get tired very easily so my life is pretty limited especially when it's combined with the leg problem.

Not much was done to treat the leg while I was in hospital and a new problem arose. I had been keeping the skin intact despite the swelling using large amounts of moisturiser but lying there dozing off most of the time that got neglected and suddenly I had open sores on my swollen leg.

The cancer was confirmed in late September and, of course, it is incurable. If conditions are right then they will give me chemo but that is simply to slow it down a bit not to finish it off.

Without chemo I was given six months and with it twelve months though to be fair they did say those numbers were very variable.

The trouble is that I can't have chemo just now. The open sores on my leg are an obvious vector for an infection and, of course, chemo would kill off my immune system allowing the infection to kill me. Also chemo depresses the body's ability to produce red blood cells and I am struggling with my HG count. Not only that but as it's thought that the HG problem was an auto-immune response I am taking Cyclosporin, an immune suppressant. that, of course, can't go on if I'm on chemo.

So until my blood is right and my leg heals there is no chance of chemo.

That's enough for now.