Well, a lot has happened in the last week.

I finished my last lot of Cisplatin, my parents turned up from Australia, I turned 30, and now I’ve found myself back in hospital (hopefully for the last time).

I have found a whole lot of new side effects like nosebleeds, being absolutely exhausted that I can hardly walk or stand up (I’d never quite felt it like this before), numb feet (hoping this sorts itself out sooner rather than later…)

I had a lovely birthday, although it was about the worst I’ve felt on any day yet. Charlie and our other lovely housemate Owen took the day off with me, and mum cooked us all a nice roast. Of course I couldn’t really eat any of it, but it was nice. I got some lovely presents and so many lovely bunches of flowers that just kept turning up throughout the day! I felt very special! We ate cake (for some reason I could eat that!) Then we watched The Commitments, a brilliant movie that we’ve been meaning to watch together for ages.

All in all a successful day. Not the 30th I had planned, but a good one considering.

The following days I just got worse, as expected, I could do little other than send everyone away and lie in bed.

Then the inevitable temperature and trip to A&E, at exactly the same time as the last cycle. This time I waited in A&E for 13 hours until I was finally admitted at about 3am into the last room they had, in the 24-hour assessment part of A&E, the CDU (Critical Decision Unit). Love a good acronym. I held out not too badly for most of the day, feeling ok, entertaining myself with my book.

First they managed to throw out my bloods instead of processing them, so that held things up for a while (how is that even possible?). At least I had a good looking, awesome Doctor to distract me (Hi Andy, it was nice to meet you).

It turns out my neutrophils were at 0.0. They’re the ones that fight infection. Also I had low sodium, which can cause seizures and all sorts of things. I had a couple of the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) team come in to see me – usually they would want to admit me and do something drastic but they were all shocked I looked fine and decided I didn’t need to go into the ICU so they gave me my antibiotics and fluids and eventually at around 3am they found me a room and I tried to grab a couple of hours of sleep. I was exhausted.

So there’s the first scintillating chapter of this part of the adventure, more to come.