The Thomas family

The Thomas family
From left to right, Tania, Dave, me and Corina

Wednesday 7 September 2011

A major milestone

Yes, I've finally taken the bull by the horns and returned to work!

I had a hospital appointment on Monday and all was well.  I even, finally, passed one of the blood count criteria which indicates that I have a strong enough immune system to be fully out and about.  Probably a good thing when returning to an open plan office and going regularly on public transport.

'Work' is letting me in very gently - I went in yesterday for 4 hours, and will do the same tomorrow.  That will be it for my first week.  As you can imagine, my first job is to catch up with everyone, and clear out my emails, so it doesn't feel much like work yet.

One thing I found out on Monday was that I may get away without a "top-up" transplant, something most people have one or more of, starting around a year after the original one.  If my leukaemia count, which is now very low (0.007%), becomes zero and stays that way after I come off the leukaemia drug, I may not need one, which would be good.  I had just assumed that I would have at least one as that is the normal course of things.  I'm not concerned either way.  I will have another test next visit to see if I have got to zero.

Michelle had two days of chemo, three days of full body radiotherapy and her bone marrow cells last week so, unsurprisingly, she was pretty exhausted.  She is starting to feel a little more normal, a few days in, and we now have the waiting game, waiting for the cells to graft.  Everything is tougher than it was for me and I really feel for her as she goes through this stage.

My next hospital appointment is in 6 weeks time so I'll do an update then, if not before.

Until then, all the best.