The Calm Before....

Wednesday 25th February is an important day for me. It's the day I begin what the doctors call the "Conditioning" chemotherapy before we do my transplant. For the few short weeks leading up to that day, since my last chemo, I have been really well. I haven't spiked a temperature, I get out of the ward most days for an hour or so, usually just to ride around on the trike, and I've shared a room with a great girl called Madi (short for Madison), who is my age. I'm half her weight, and she's about half as tall as me again, but we get on well. We do the trivia quizzes together, and we've had a bit of success on that front. I'm even starting to get a bit of my hair back. It's a pity it will probably all fall out again with the next chemo, but it's been fun giving myself little mohawks and combovers. You don't realise what fun hair can be until you don't have any. I'm at school again now, except school comes to me. I'm doing Maths, Science, English and History everyday, and for fun things, the play therapist does cooking with us, so we'll call that Home Economics, the music therapist brings us all sorts of fun things to do, so we'll call that Music, and in my spare time, I love to paint, so we'll call that Art. So you see, I'm really quite busy. On top of all that, I'm gaining enough knowledge in medical circles to be fairly well up in Biology, Medical Technology, Anatomy, Chemistry, and have seen enough radio isotopes lately to include Nuclear Physics. That's quite a lot for a year 7 to handle, and especially when I have to do it in bed. I'm actually getting quite good at "self nursing". I can start and stop my own Naso Gastric feeds, after first checking that the NG tube is in my stomach by drawing contents out with a syringe and testing it with blue litmus paper (chemistry again), and then I hook myself up. I can take my own temperature, and the nurses usually get me to help them when they do my blood samples each day. "Eliza, could you clamp that lumen for me please? Eliza, do the litmus test for me please?" The nurses here at Camperdown Ward are really nice. There all fun and some are just a little crazy. There's a few Nicoles, a few Mels, a Fiona, a Jo, a Vicki, a Scott or two, a Rosey, and "Oh heeyyy" Eloise, and many more. They're all great.

The Big Day

Now we know! We now know my Bone Marrow Transplant will be the 6th March, 2009. I will have a very high dose chemotherapy for 7 to 10 days leading up to that date. The actual length of that chemo will be decided closer to the date, but whatever the length, it will totally obliterate any remaining bone marrow I have, clearing the way for the new bone marrow to establish itself. This is really giving me a new immune system, and because of that, I have to be in isolation for many weeks afterwards. Isolation times vary from 2 to 18 weeks, and the average is 8 weeks. Hopefully I can look forward to being average or a bit better, and be out of isolation in early May. This is the treatment that will cure my leukaemia. Bring it on!

Back into Chemo

After the lung operation, I felt really sore, even though Dr Harvey was able to remove the infection with key hole surgery, it still knocked me about for a while. After recovering for a few days in Surgical Ward, I was moved back to Camperdown Ward to begin my next chemotherapy. This chemo was much, much stronger than the first, and was known as the FLAG due to the names of the chemicals. The chemicals administered in this chemo were Citarabin and Fludarabine. The Fludarabine was infused every day for half an hour for five days, and the Citarabin was infused for three days, over three hours, and at least four hours after the Fludarabine. When they give you chemo, they also give you drugs to stop you feeling sick, but he one they gave me this time made me feel worse. I can't remember the name of it, but it was horrible. Then they gave me one called Dexamethazone, and it really helped me. In my first chemo, I was given Citarabin at the rate of 100mg per square metre of my surface area (which they calculate using my height and weight), every second day, for 10 ten days. This time, they gave it to me for three straight days, at the rate of 2g per square metre. That's 2000mg per square metre. No wonder I felt sick, twenty times the rate, and trying to recover from lung surgery.
Back in Camperdown Ward, I am now in the end room with a view out on the playground. With a new room mate from the Central Coast called Maddie. She is also in Year 7, so we can do a lot of our school work together.