Has the treatment worked? This may be the answer... (click-bait alert!)

Beautiful 'welcome home' flowers sent by my even more beautiful friends! xx

Hi all! I've had a few people asking whether I know if the treatment 'has worked'. I thought I'd try and answer that question (to the best of my knowledge at the moment!): I think that we can all assume that the treatment is working. This is because we wiped my existing white blood cells (circa 27 July), and related immune system, down to a recorded 0.04 (40 WBC per microlitre, when normal would be 4,500 - 11,000). Putting the stem cells back allowed my bone marrow to start producing WBCs again. However these are naive white blood cells. They don't know anything about anything I had immunity against in the past, or how to suppress viruses that already lie dormant in my body (such as chickenpox).

So all of this means that at the moment I'm avoiding large crowds of people (and their (probably inevitable given this winter) sicknesses); I'm basically eating a pregnancy diet (everything well-cooked (no poached eggs - the Millenial in me is devastated by this), no leftovers, no soft cheeses, no sushi, etc...); and for the next year I have to take anti-viral meds twice a day, and prophylactic antibiotics for six months. It's also recommended that I have childhood immunisations, as well as things like the shingles immunisation, in about six months. Shunning crowds and the diet will lessen over the coming weeks / months though - my body has to learn sometime!

And so we will continue to assume that it has all 'worked', unless we get information otherwise (such as an MRI result that shows new damage/lesions, or I have a relapse, for example). In terms of improvements, the ball is really in my court on that one - continuing to do my physiotherapy exercises, just generally looking after myself. The idea is that without a naughty immune system wreaking havoc and inflammation, it would give my body a chance to heal. But it's all day by day; I haven't noticed any dramatic improvements just yet (and may not, but as far as I'm concerned, not getting worse makes the treatment 100% a success).

So physiotherapy is a big part of my days; last week I saw a physiotherapist to continue the work I started in Singapore. I had been doing physiotherapy exercises regularly for the past few years, as well as yoga, pilates, and general stretching. Those previous physio-exercises were predominantly floor-based, more pilates-esque. The physiotherapy I'm doing now is more functional--exercises working on ensuring my muscles and joints are working how they're supposed to (rather than the 'making do' I've become in the habit of). These are exercises as (seemingly) simple as putting one foot up on a step, then bringing it back down again. I say seemingly simple because getting all the right muscles working and doing it properly is exhausting for me!

And my hair is slowly starting to grow back--it's softer, like little fluffy baby hair. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying wearing wigs (I've tied my wig hair up in this photo):

And little ZJ is being a bit strange; he's had a tough few months (oh, I can't possibly imagine...!), hopefully he realises that things are back to normal in his life and he chills out a bit.

Talk later! Rach xx