The Iceman cometh..

My WBC doubled overnight to 0.83 not quite high enough to start harvesting stem cells. It's good to see that my marrow is responding, but a little frustrating that I'm stuck in this place for another day or two yet. Tomorrow they should be around 1.6 if the current pattern of doubling each day holds. That's what has happened in the past. It's an exponential thing, taking time as we wait around for the smaller counts to start building decent sized numbers.

Apparently my temperature last night was 35.1 . I've never recorded a temperature that low in my life, but apparently that's a common reading to have in this ward.
One good thing about having a blazing fever of 39 for most of last week is that it actually helps kill cancer cells. That's probably not something the doctors here take into account. But it's a well documented fact that cancer cells are killed by high body temperatures. Obviously not all are killed, but hey ..anything that gives an edge!

On a totally different subject. The Internet connections I have are as bad as each other. First is Vodafone 3G (Vodem card in my laptop) it's pathetically slow and extremely intermittent. It's a far cry from what they show in their television advertising promoting 3G mobile internet. The second internet connection option I have is Cafenet wireless. I got perfect reception from them when I was here two weeks ago having chemo, but that was when I was on the other side of the building. I purchased heaps of pre-paid internet and now I can't use it. I'm not too upset though as it was a fluke that I managed to connect to it anyway. The nearest hotspot for them is down in Riddiford street, That's a huge distance!,
Anyway the point I was going to make is that even in this high tech world we live in, you can't even get decent internet is a hospital in the middle of our capital city. Perhaps when the new hospital opens... (I'm not planning on coming back to find out)

While typing the above I've had two visits.. one from Doctor D'Souza who confirmed that I'm still too low to harvest. Even he seems a bit less upbeat than yesterday, saying that we still have the stem cells from the previous harvest (The ones that did the round trip to Germany). I suggested that even if we had a poor harvest we could add that to the previous total and have a really good total for transfusion. I then added that I'm sure we will be fine tomorrow and get a great harvest. He agreed.

I go home tomorrow regardless of whether we harvest or not as I can return for that no problem.

OK, This is just crazy.. The nurse just took my temperature and it's now 34.9!. At this rate I'll be the Iceman in a couple of weeks! (The nurse seemed completely unconcerned by the reading)