I also forgot to mention in the last blog that my platlets have gone up to 122, woop woop!!! They are finally begining to behave themselves!!
More news I guess after next check up mid October.
XXX
I was diagnosed with Old Man's Cancer (Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia) on the 19th January 2007 when I was 22. This is an open honest blog about what it's like living with a user-friendly cancer, taking pill chemotherapy daily, possibly for life, and everything that goes alongside it.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Thursday, 4 September 2008
Leukemic rate of 0.16%!!!
Well my faithful little blogletts,
As you may have noticed when coming to have a look at my recent post I have managed to get a picture onto this site, woop woop!! Not sure why I had such troubles before, it was really simple!
I do realise that I have been rather crap recently at blogging, the days and months seem to fly by! It terrifies me how it goes by so quickly when I have done absolutely fuck all this summer! Tomorrow I will have done my third day of work since leaving uni! 3 whole days of work since June how good am I??!! So yes, my plan of temping all summer, save money and move to London by November hasn't exactly happened. The summer it would appear is a shit time to temp, in as much as there about about 50 trillion students and graduates all after the same 5 jobs. I'm hoping it will start to pick up, or I'm going to have to start selling drugs! I'm hoping that as I got a score of excellent in my data entry test in Adecco temping agency in Colchester (and then have the 2 guys who work there take the piss out of me, making out that I have no life and spend all my time practising data entry...they are charming! And obviously act in a highly professional way with their new employees!!) a extremely highly paid, yet boring data entry job will come up where they need someone til Christmas and then I'm sorted. Also if any of you know someone who needs a new member of staff in Jan, tell them about me!!!!
So job beg over I shall move onto health stuff.
Well it's all fucking brilliant really!! (I'm swearing twice as much as I haven't posted in a while, need to keep the swearing quota average up!) I had a letter in the post last week from my consultant, very kind of her! To tell me that the Leukemic rate had dropped again from 0.50% to 0.16% WOOP FUCKING WOOP!!!!
I had another check up at the beginning of this week so will know the results either at my next check up in October or might get another surprise letter in the post! I also knew that I was due a bone marrow test, so mentioned this in the check up. Instead of being told to book one in for the next week or two, my consultant said 'Aah yes. Are you around for the half an hour or so?' (I thought I was going to be picking up a new prescription which would have taken about an hour) so replied 'yup'. She said 'Good, you can have it now, just wait for the doctor to grab you!'. Oh good!!! So off I went to have the bone marrow test.
As I had had one before I knew what to expect, and once again the most painful bit was the anaesthetic. The rest felt odd, but didn't hurt. It feels a bit like when you bang your funny bone, not the immediate pain, but the odd ache afterwards. Also when the needle when through the bone wall my right leg shot out, the needle must have hit a nerve. Was very odd and made me laugh, as my body was doing things that I wasn't telling it to do, but rather what the needle told it to do when hitting nerves...ODD! The results from that take a couple of weeks to be processed.
What else, hmmm...oh, I also have a rather interesting moment getting more of my drugs, because Scotland and England are different (as you are constantly reminded by the Scots!) and have different NHS's etc there was almost a rather funny (well not really) incident. My consultant went to write out the prescription in the standard way, until I pointed out that the Hammersmith have never perscribed it, I'd only had it from Edinburgh. To which professor Apperley said 'Oh!'. She's had to apply to my local PCT (for those of you unschooled in the language of medicine, and shame on you for not knowing!! Ha ha ha! PCT stands for Primary Care Trust and they decide who gets their drugs paid for and who doesn't.) So I had my fingers crossed for a little bit on Monday praying they would agree to pay for the drugs. I had a good argument though, as Edinburgh paid for them no questions asked, my local PCT should honour that and carry on paying, and I do believe that they will. Thank god!! As I don't know how much these ones cost, but the last cost £24,000 a year, and I don't have that kind of money!! Once again, any donations to the 'I'm seriously poor fund' are kindly accepted.
What else, hmm, have to go in a minute, but shall carry on manically typing til I have to run get in my little broom broom and go to the gym.
I have a plan of what to do with my life, very exciting, don't know if I've mentioned it already.
I'm going to learn Arabic. If the hospital say I can go, I'm going to go to Jordan for a month to do an intensive, learn the basics course. Then either go to Egypt for a year, or go to the American School in Beirut (not sure how you spell that one, should probably find out!). And at the moment I want to go into Islamic Art. Not sure what part, maybe insurance, or buying and selling, or looking after someones collection etc. But knowing the language and really absorbing myself into their culture will teach me the right way to go about business deals etc etc
So ummm, I think that's about it. I'm also writing my story as it were. Don't know if I'll try to get it published or what, but I thought it would be a good thing to do. I also want to get involved with teens and early 20 year olds who get diagnosed with cancer to show them and help them realise that it's not a death sentence, and that by being happy and up beat you can help beat it, as I have. I know that so much of my getting better has been to do with my Mummy, and all the research she has done into alternative therapies and food to not eat(like dairy, refined sugar and caffine, all proven that cancer cells feed off them) and foods to eat (fresh raw veg, manuka honey, wheatgrass etc etc etc) have helped enormously. I also think that at this point I should give myself some credit and acknowledge the fact that I've been fucking brilliant, and that by doing some seriously good head work, and by not letting the cancer get to me, and by getting on with life and keeping happy, I have done a lot to get the cancer to fuck off!
So on that note, I'm going to bugger off to the gym as I HAVE to tidy my room later and it's going to take HOURS!!! So the sooner I go, the sooner I get back!!
So much love, laughter and smiles as always,
XXX
As you may have noticed when coming to have a look at my recent post I have managed to get a picture onto this site, woop woop!! Not sure why I had such troubles before, it was really simple!
I do realise that I have been rather crap recently at blogging, the days and months seem to fly by! It terrifies me how it goes by so quickly when I have done absolutely fuck all this summer! Tomorrow I will have done my third day of work since leaving uni! 3 whole days of work since June how good am I??!! So yes, my plan of temping all summer, save money and move to London by November hasn't exactly happened. The summer it would appear is a shit time to temp, in as much as there about about 50 trillion students and graduates all after the same 5 jobs. I'm hoping it will start to pick up, or I'm going to have to start selling drugs! I'm hoping that as I got a score of excellent in my data entry test in Adecco temping agency in Colchester (and then have the 2 guys who work there take the piss out of me, making out that I have no life and spend all my time practising data entry...they are charming! And obviously act in a highly professional way with their new employees!!) a extremely highly paid, yet boring data entry job will come up where they need someone til Christmas and then I'm sorted. Also if any of you know someone who needs a new member of staff in Jan, tell them about me!!!!
So job beg over I shall move onto health stuff.
Well it's all fucking brilliant really!! (I'm swearing twice as much as I haven't posted in a while, need to keep the swearing quota average up!) I had a letter in the post last week from my consultant, very kind of her! To tell me that the Leukemic rate had dropped again from 0.50% to 0.16% WOOP FUCKING WOOP!!!!
I had another check up at the beginning of this week so will know the results either at my next check up in October or might get another surprise letter in the post! I also knew that I was due a bone marrow test, so mentioned this in the check up. Instead of being told to book one in for the next week or two, my consultant said 'Aah yes. Are you around for the half an hour or so?' (I thought I was going to be picking up a new prescription which would have taken about an hour) so replied 'yup'. She said 'Good, you can have it now, just wait for the doctor to grab you!'. Oh good!!! So off I went to have the bone marrow test.
As I had had one before I knew what to expect, and once again the most painful bit was the anaesthetic. The rest felt odd, but didn't hurt. It feels a bit like when you bang your funny bone, not the immediate pain, but the odd ache afterwards. Also when the needle when through the bone wall my right leg shot out, the needle must have hit a nerve. Was very odd and made me laugh, as my body was doing things that I wasn't telling it to do, but rather what the needle told it to do when hitting nerves...ODD! The results from that take a couple of weeks to be processed.
What else, hmmm...oh, I also have a rather interesting moment getting more of my drugs, because Scotland and England are different (as you are constantly reminded by the Scots!) and have different NHS's etc there was almost a rather funny (well not really) incident. My consultant went to write out the prescription in the standard way, until I pointed out that the Hammersmith have never perscribed it, I'd only had it from Edinburgh. To which professor Apperley said 'Oh!'. She's had to apply to my local PCT (for those of you unschooled in the language of medicine, and shame on you for not knowing!! Ha ha ha! PCT stands for Primary Care Trust and they decide who gets their drugs paid for and who doesn't.) So I had my fingers crossed for a little bit on Monday praying they would agree to pay for the drugs. I had a good argument though, as Edinburgh paid for them no questions asked, my local PCT should honour that and carry on paying, and I do believe that they will. Thank god!! As I don't know how much these ones cost, but the last cost £24,000 a year, and I don't have that kind of money!! Once again, any donations to the 'I'm seriously poor fund' are kindly accepted.
What else, hmm, have to go in a minute, but shall carry on manically typing til I have to run get in my little broom broom and go to the gym.
I have a plan of what to do with my life, very exciting, don't know if I've mentioned it already.
I'm going to learn Arabic. If the hospital say I can go, I'm going to go to Jordan for a month to do an intensive, learn the basics course. Then either go to Egypt for a year, or go to the American School in Beirut (not sure how you spell that one, should probably find out!). And at the moment I want to go into Islamic Art. Not sure what part, maybe insurance, or buying and selling, or looking after someones collection etc. But knowing the language and really absorbing myself into their culture will teach me the right way to go about business deals etc etc
So ummm, I think that's about it. I'm also writing my story as it were. Don't know if I'll try to get it published or what, but I thought it would be a good thing to do. I also want to get involved with teens and early 20 year olds who get diagnosed with cancer to show them and help them realise that it's not a death sentence, and that by being happy and up beat you can help beat it, as I have. I know that so much of my getting better has been to do with my Mummy, and all the research she has done into alternative therapies and food to not eat(like dairy, refined sugar and caffine, all proven that cancer cells feed off them) and foods to eat (fresh raw veg, manuka honey, wheatgrass etc etc etc) have helped enormously. I also think that at this point I should give myself some credit and acknowledge the fact that I've been fucking brilliant, and that by doing some seriously good head work, and by not letting the cancer get to me, and by getting on with life and keeping happy, I have done a lot to get the cancer to fuck off!
So on that note, I'm going to bugger off to the gym as I HAVE to tidy my room later and it's going to take HOURS!!! So the sooner I go, the sooner I get back!!
So much love, laughter and smiles as always,
XXX
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)