Pre-SCT

Welcome to Dial M. This won’t be a blog of the minutiae of my life. Just a record of my experience with myeloma. If you want the rest, you’ll have to take me out for a drink. And we can both promise, on those occasions, not to mention myeloma at all.

In 9 days time (if all goes to plan), I will have a stem cell transplant. One friend has already pointed out that this sounds quite “whizz bang”. In fact, it will just be a bag of blood, attached to a drip. I’ve even seen the bag before, because it’s my blood, and I was there when they took it out. Actually, in fairness, the apheresis machine they used to do so was quite whizzy. You don’t often come across centrifuge jokes. So that one was a technical novelty, even if it’s not very funny. Hmm. I’m getting distracted here. Focus. Where was I? Oh, yes. Cancer. How could I forget.

In 8 days time (if all goes to plan), I will have a massive dose of chemotherapy, which will destroy all my bone marrow. And hopefully, with it, most (though sadly not all) of my myeloma. I’ll need the stem cells in order to grow new bone marrow. I’ll need the bone marrow to produce new blood cells. Simple really. I’m going to be laid up in a hospital ward for 3 or 4 weeks, and probably laid up at home for a couple of months after that. I thought it might be useful to keep people up to date on what’s going on. Saves you phoning Marisa and asking her.

Do phone Marisa though, but talk about other stuff instead.