24hrs later..

After bleeding all day Thursday I was very tempted by late afternoon to go to the emergency dept.
I decided I wouldn't. My logic was that I wasn't loosing enough blood to be of significance and that I was due in the hospital day ward the next day for blood anyway.

Sarah and I got up up early and got to the blood & cancer centre just after 9am. The nurses and doctors on the front desk could see by the tissue plugs in my nose that were dripping blood that things weren't quite right today.

I found a chair and within a short while two large bags of platelets had been administered via my PICC line. I continued to bleed profusely from my nose for several more hours.
Finally I took the gamble and removed the plug from my right nostril. A large gelatinous red/black mass of gunk followed it out. I continued to bleed for another couple of hours.

Then later in the day while getting two units of whole blood I was talking to the duty doctor and quite subconsciously gently "pulled" on some "mucus" at the back of my throat. That was not a good thing to have done! It just kept on coming until my entire mouth was full of this mass of congealed blood! I looked around for somewhere to spit it out before I choked as my nose was still blocked. Sarah must have realised what the problem was because she handed me a plastic bowl and I quickly emptied my mouth's contents into that.
Now that was gross!

It wasn't until about 5pm Friday that I stopped bleeding. A total of around thirty two hours.
Today I'm feeling great. I have plenty of energy from the new blood and I can cough now without blood coming from my mouth and nose. It's not a taste you get used to.

I woke this morning to a temperature of 38C. At 38C I'm supposed to go to the emergency dept.
We waited for another half hour or so and it slowly dropped. Phew!
Dr D'Souza spotted me yesterday while in the day ward and said "now you are going to get through this without any dramas aren't you!" I assured him I would. Not that I have any control over my bodies choice of infection. We all realise that I can't afford another major infection, it will almost certainly kill me.

All I can do is keep away from other people, wash lots, and keep taking the GCSF injections to stimulate my blood counts.

Today I have a friend coming over to work on my Evo's exhaust system. It seems so strange that here I am a person who has spent thirty years building high performance exhausts and now I have to sit in a chair and give instructions to someone else. Such is my poor level of fitness.

On that note I do feel a lot better these days, even just since last weekend. My cough is better and my feeling of well-being is vastly improved.

..Later