Home.. Home at last!

Yeah I know.. I'm a slacker, I said I'd post something once I got home and settled in. Let's just say it took me a few days to find my feet again.

I left the Klinik on Monday 29th Sept at 6pm. In the morning my blood counts were 4.2 WBC and 50 for the platelets. I was given two units of platelets in the afternoon and sent on my way with a fist full of antibiotic tablets for the flight home.

Mentally I'd decided that the point the plane left the ground at Munich airport was the time I'd celebrate the end of my time in Germany. I'd been focusing on that point all week. It was probably the only thing that kept me relatively sane. You may have noticed that my posts were becoming increasingly less cheerful in those final days. I really was 'over the whole Germany thing'.

So there I was on board the plane and just about to take my seat next to the window, when the passenger in the aisle seat next to me greeted me with a loud "gidday mate, where ya from?". It was so good to hear that familiar Kiwi accent! "Wellington" I replied as I shook his hand. "I'm from Masterton, Bob's the name". We buckled ourselves in and continued to talk non-stop for the next couple of hours. I completely missed the opportunity to celebrate the take-off and my departure.

Bob, like me, is a man in his mid to late forties. He is over six foot tall and maybe 100+kg's. He wore a black heavy metal tee-shirt and jeans. Business was the reason for his travel. Every two years he travels to Germany for the big transportation trade fairs as part of his job for a trucking firm. The twelve hour flight from Munich to Hong Kong seemed to take no time at all as we discussed everything from rebuilding old Ford Falcons to our mutual agreement on how we believed all Germans spoke English but kept it a secret.

At Hong Kong airport I had a two hour wait for my connecting flight. I didn't enjoy the wait. I felt quite ill, and was genuinely concerned that if I got any worse I'd have to postpone flying and stay in a hotel until it passed. I took a couple of paracetamol tablets and by the time I needed to head off to the departure gate I was feeling a lot better. The queue for the gate was huge and I'd managed somehow be be the last in line. The guy in front of me looked strangely familiar... Oh, It was Bob, only he had changed from his black tee shirt and jeans into a business shirt and pants. We joked about the odds of having the same seats again and checked out our seat numbers. Opposite ends of the plane this time. Oh well. Bob asked me what I was doing when I got to Auckland. "Sitting for two hours in the terminal waiting for the flight to Wellington" I replied. Bob handed me a card. "I'll meet you at the Koru lounge" I took the card, complimentary entry to the first class lounge, we took our seats at opposite ends of the plane and so began the second leg of the journey.

The Air New Zealand 747 was far better appointed than the Lufthansa Airbus. Firstly you have an LCD screen in the seat rest in front of you. There are dozens of movies to choose from, plus audio channels and TV shows. I watched three movies and grabbed what sleep I could in between being startled awake by the endless babies cries and noise from the people around me. The woman that sat beside me was very large. In fact I had my doubts when she first sat down that she would fit in the seat. She kind of did. The sides of her stomach poured over the arm-rest like dough. I could not place my arm anywhere near it for fear of injuring her. I pushed myself into the corner of my seat, away from her, and remained there for the next eleven and a half hours.

As promised Bob was waiting for me at the Koru Club Lounge at Auckland airport. Unlimited free food and alcohol in a peaceful environment, what a great way to waste a couple of hours.. Only I can't drink alcohol so I stuck with orange juice. Bob introduced me to his boss and we sat and talked until our flights were called.

Sarah met me at Wellington airport, It was so good to see her again. Once home at around 3pm I immediately fell asleep on the couch. I woke briefly at around 8pm for dinner and then went straight to bed and slept for another twelve hours. Even now 4 days later, I'm still sleeping almost half of each day. On Friday I had organised to get a blood test and to see my doctor, Stu. The nurse that took my blood did a great job in finding a vein and getting a sample on the first try. I congratulated her and told her that she had done better than most people had in the last two months. She asked why I had traveled to Germany and I gave her the short version, but even that took ten minutes to relay. She said she used to be an ICU nurse and she agreed that the chances I was over-dosed back in 2005 was more likely than not, based on her own experiences in hospitals. We will never know for sure.

I visited Dr Stu later that day. The blood test results were not in yet. It had only been six hours.. welcome back to New Zealand! One of the IV sites on my right wrist has become inflamed so I got Dr Stu to write out a prescription for some antibiotic cream. He also wrote me a referral for the PET scan, and I got him to state that a copy of the results and CD of the images be sent to me. I asked him if he could email me the blood results when they came through. This he did a couple of hours later. here is what he wrote....

Hi Ron
They faxed it through urgently (cos they thought it was really bad). For you, I guess, it's pretty good!
Haemoglobin 115 (130-180)
Platelets 62 (150-450)
White cell count 4.5 (4-11) with normal neutrophils
Stu

I'm pretty happy about those counts! They are higher than the same day on the last cycle. I'll get one more test next week just to make sure they are on the rise still. I really wasn't looking forward to fronting up at hospital and demanding a platelet transfusion. I still get a lot of health professionals asking me who is in charge of my treatment. They always look at me in total disbelief when I say "I am". This is why I get DR Stu to write out all my referrals etc.. without his little bit of paper, nothing gets done. Even with the PET scan we wrote that a copy had to go to Dr Dady at Wellington hospital. I don't care if he gets a copy or not, but it's a way of getting around the stupid rule they have at Pacific Radiology that you can't have a PET scan unless the results are viewed by an Oncologist. Like what the heck is Wellington Hospital going to do with my results? I'm so far off their radar I might as well be on mars. I'll send a copy to Germany.

So that's about it folks, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm looking a lot healthier than I was when I left. It's only day 21 of the second cycle so I'm still recovering. Day 28 is when you'd consider that the treatment period is over.
This Monday I shall book a time for my PET scan, hopefully early November. Results from that should come trough a week or two after that.
Hopefully I will be posting some good news here after firing off an email reminder to those of you that have subscribed to my Blog-Roll (in the post below) in about mid November.

Till then... Ron