It’s been over a week now since I left hospital, and apart from a few visits from friends, family and nurses, I’ve spent most of the time resting and playing.

After leaving the hospital, my body crashed and I spend the first I few days lying down and watching telly. With a spinning head and pains from my fingers and throughout my body, there wasn’t much more I could do other than sleep. Even watching the telly was uncomfortable at times and sleeping seemed to be a good way to hide the time away. The addition of diarrhoea was not a welcome entry to my symptom list.

On Tuesday (day 71) I had a brief meeting with the consultant who said that everything seemed to be going to plan. And that as soon as my blood had recovered I could go back into hospital for the final round. Being optimistic, I was hoping that it could start the following Monday (yesterday) and the doctor arranged for my blood results to be monitored in case my body bounced back quicker than she expected. Before I had time to call up and check my blood results yesterday afternoon, I had a call from the hospital asking me to come in ready to start treatment. Although I was not looking forward to another 10 days in hospital, a glimpse of the end put me in a good mood.

Just as I settle in to the routine of a 6am start, and hours of sitting around staring at the wall the doctor arrived. Apparently there had been a miscommunication of my results and although my neutrophil levels were up to 3.4 on Wednesday, they had dropped back to 0.2 this morning meaning that I’m back in neutropenia and that another onslaught of Chemo is dangerous at this point.

So having packed up my belongings again, I’m ready to return home to sit out my internal recovery.

I think this has been the biggest theme of my recovery so far, apart from the waiting, it seems that yo-yo-ing between home and hospital with barely hours to prepare and plan, let alone days has been quite a struggle for my mental stability. I desperately want to start planning the rest of my life, but I don’t even know where I’ll be in 3-5 days time let alone know how my body is going to respond at each stage.

unfortunately it seems that forecasting isn’t something that the NHS does very well.

On a lighter note

My new patterned finger nails seem to be coming on nicely. Luckily stripes coordinate well into my current wardrobe, although it would be better if they had more vibrant colours.