It has been a crazy few weeks that I do not want to go through again. I have been transferred to Peter Mac from St. Vincents because I was pretty much recovered at St. V's (or so they thought).
From the surgery or something at St. V's I have picked up a fungal infection. Usually your body will fight that off but when your body has no white blood cells (the chemo kills them) you can't fight infection. I have been on a lot of antibiotics but they didn't really seem to be doing the job.
So I am now on a special program where I have friends (A huge thanks to all my friends the response to donate it has been so overwhelming) donating their white blood cells. This involves them for 3 days having a machine take their blood spin out the white blood cells and put the other blood back. The blood then goes to me which helps fight infection.
Usually everything goes alright but I did have a reaction one night to the blood. This caused crazy panic in the ward and eventually I was taken to the ICU unit here in Peter Mac. In ICU you are constantly monitored so your freedom is non existent. If you need the bathroom you use a jug and you can't have the internet. It's not the best place to be, so over the next few days I was transferred from the ward to the ICU about 4 times (talk about crazy).
Finally I am now in the ward with internet access and a bit of freedom. The plan is to continue to give me white blood cells until my own white blood counts come to an acceptable level. I believe the doctors want me to maintain a white blood count of at least .3 and today I was sitting at .24 so not far off. For those who want to know healthy people have white blood counts of about 6 so I am a long way off being fully recovered.
Again we play the waiting game, unsure when I'll get out but fingers crossed it is soon.
From the surgery or something at St. V's I have picked up a fungal infection. Usually your body will fight that off but when your body has no white blood cells (the chemo kills them) you can't fight infection. I have been on a lot of antibiotics but they didn't really seem to be doing the job.
So I am now on a special program where I have friends (A huge thanks to all my friends the response to donate it has been so overwhelming) donating their white blood cells. This involves them for 3 days having a machine take their blood spin out the white blood cells and put the other blood back. The blood then goes to me which helps fight infection.
Usually everything goes alright but I did have a reaction one night to the blood. This caused crazy panic in the ward and eventually I was taken to the ICU unit here in Peter Mac. In ICU you are constantly monitored so your freedom is non existent. If you need the bathroom you use a jug and you can't have the internet. It's not the best place to be, so over the next few days I was transferred from the ward to the ICU about 4 times (talk about crazy).
Finally I am now in the ward with internet access and a bit of freedom. The plan is to continue to give me white blood cells until my own white blood counts come to an acceptable level. I believe the doctors want me to maintain a white blood count of at least .3 and today I was sitting at .24 so not far off. For those who want to know healthy people have white blood counts of about 6 so I am a long way off being fully recovered.
Again we play the waiting game, unsure when I'll get out but fingers crossed it is soon.
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