So far, so good.


I just want to start this post by acknowledging the very sad loss of a close friend and family member of the Fernando family; my heart is going out to family back home, love you all 💜

Pretty short post today, lots of pictures. Friday was day 1 of chemotherapy (just 'conditioning' chemo, to help the process of getting the stem cells out of my bone marrow - proper MS-killing chemo is happening at the end of the month). Despite this, it is still chemo, so they loaded me up with anti-nausea drugs before starting the chemo drip. (Look at this pump!!!)

They used and octopus attachment to the cannula, so I had three things dripping into me at once (each level of the pump above is for a different drip, and each drip can be going at different rates - that's a geeky point that probably only interests my Tysabri family).

The purple one is the chemo. I feel like it becomes scarier when it's in a purple bag, but apparently it's that colour to keep the light out.

Anyway, it was all fine for me, I was one of the lucky ones who breezed through. No nausea or anything, I even sent Peter on a mission to the Subway at the front of the hospital to get me a cookie.

The fact of a catheter is amazing - literally did not have to get out of bed the whole day and night I was in hospital. In saying that though, the fact I couldn't / didn't need to get out of bed meant that I felt like my body started turning to stone (as it is want to do with my MS - I get really stiff with spasticity). So yeah, that's something to think about counteracting for the end of the month, when I go in for the long hospital stay, with the more intense chemo. 

So, all in all, it wasn't a holiday, but it wasn't that bad. I'm one of the lucky ones. 

And when I got home from the hospital yesterday (Saturday), some beautiful flowers arrived for me, sent by my fantastic friends in Sydney, Jamie and Tom! 

So, just taking it easy at the apartment now, doing a lot of reading, and trying to stretch my body out. Meanwhile, Peter has shaved off his beard, and Z.J. seems relaxed at home in Wellington. 


Back to the hospital on Tuesday to get the GCSF (Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor) drugs that stimulate stem-cell production, and get them out of my bone marrow. It's a twice daily injection I (or Peter) have to do for a week. I had an amusing conversation with Dr. Loh about the self-injections: because of all the self-injection I have done over the years on the various MS drugs, she thought that I wouldn't need much, if any, coaching for this. However for all of the subcutaneous injections I have done, they all came with flash auto-injectors which basically did the injecting for me--I just had to press a button. (I actually still have those auto-injectors, and I considered bringing them over for this, but decided against it for fear of customs x-raying my bags and thinking they were bombs or something, and just generally they take up luggage space and might not fit the GCSF syringe.)

That's me then, until next week! 

Rach xx



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