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.