Today however they wanted to get my chest echo, my intramuscular injection and another intrathecal injection done.
My programme does outline only three intrathecal's (that's the ones straight in to the fluid that surrounds the spine and the brain) but seeing as that fluid came back positive for leukaemia before now, I'm going to be having them weekly until its clear again. I didn't mind this initially, seeing as the original intrathecal didn't really hurt, but today was a bit of an ordeal.
Again I was a few platelets short so I had to have another tranfusion and seeing as I'd had them all before I wasn't concerned at all. So this Paediatrician came in to talk to me about the study that I'd joined, so that my case can be profiled against other similar cases and my care can be better tailored to my progress and I can try and get through it with as few side-effects as possible. I was trying to concentrate on what she was saying but I started itching... a lot... everywhere...and I mean, EVERYWHERE. To start with it was just annoying but I soon got pretty concerned when the rash broke up all over my face and my chest started to feel tight.
I called the nurse they did a test on my heart, which was fine, put me on some oxygen and saline and gave me hydrocortisone and piriton.
I was shaking and finding it a little hard to breathe... to be honest it was a pretty big reminder that this treatment isn't just going to be a lot of little injections and lying around in bed waiting for things to work, some of this stuff's going to be bad. Having said that though, they said the reaction to the platelets is fairly common (infact a haemotologist even came in to explain it to me), they don't match platelets to your blood type since apparently it makes no difference. They think the bad reaction is just something to do with different proteins and that. Still it shouldn't happen again, I'll be given the hydrocortisone and piriton before each platelet transfusion from now on so should be fine.
But yeah, after that I had the intrathecal injection... I said I wasn't worried seeing as the last one was fine. This one.. was.. painful. Sorry if anybody is about to have one, but this time the Doctor had a real hard time getting the needle where it needed to go, I got some shooting pains down my right leg, one of them made me shout out but thinking about it probably wasn't any worse than being kicked. It's just a very different kind of pain when it's inside you!
Still it made me sleepy and after a bit of a nap I'm feeling fine enough to blog it all...
