Thalidomide, Hospital Stay and of course Moulton Bikes.

The danger of not writing a post in a blog is that folks fear the worst! But I'm still here! It has however been a rocky couple of weeks and I ended up in hospital for 5 days. To cut a long story short, I was in having radiotherapy on the new spots on my shoulder and leg then went home. Sitting watching the telly all of a sudden I was hit by a pretty powerful dose of the rigours and couldn't stop shaking. Temperature was also up and so - off to hospital again( well I hadn't been there for a few hours!). Suspected infection which we never did locate but I got the usual high level of care I'm used to now from the nurses and doctors on the ward. Interestingly it wasn't my own ward because of bed shortage- I'll come back to this later.

Spent almost 5 days on IV antibiotics but also identified more bone problems in my rib cage this time and so lined up for more radiotherapy. Also seemed my bloods were pretty low so I had a transfusion - the first since my transplant. Interesting thing about low bloods - eg my haemoglobin was low, my neutrophils were low is that this was a real concern for the ward I was on ( not a haematology ward) whereas for the haematology docs who came to see me it was just usual run of the mill stuff. Interesting the difference in ward cultures.

So I'm home with a pretty sore rib cage and now on stronger pain killers and a bit sensitive to meeting groups of people because of my susceptibility to infections. Also of course on the thalidomide and it does seem that -despite all the other drugs I'm now taking- that I am managing to tolerate the thalidomide. So we should see if this is the case and also whether its attacking the myeloma or not when I go back to clinic on the 29th. I've asked Huw my consultant if there is any chance of a body transplant- even one that's been used a bit would do me fine- but unfortunately he feels medical science isn't quite there yet!

More importantly I bought another old moulton bike to restore- great bikes and they take me right back to the 60s. And for ye of little faith I intend to post a before and after picture of the bike I'm working on just now- I've even surprised myself at how good it looks! I'm determined to ride my bike again ( I'm also building a home made recumbent bike) and came across this foto which I sent to a fellow biker on his birthday-wonderful picture

And to tell a story against myself and which involved my transplant nurse telling me off- the last time I had the rigours I thought I could deal with them myself by stripping down to my underpants and going to sit outside in the garden in the middle of a frosty night to get my temperature down. Needless to say it didn't help but it certainly gave my neighbours something to think about!