I'm so far out of transplant now I've given up putting day +??? in
front of the title because its getting more and difficult to work out!
Needless to say its been nearly 7 months now since my transplant and
I'm finally starting to glance at what its like to be normal again (not
that I want to ginx it).
There have been a few problems, I
developed this rash a few weeks ago and was itching like mad. The
Doctors were worried it was going to be another bout of Graft vs. Host
Disease, though it didn't seem similar to the rash I had the first
time, but it did coincide with my weening off the Cyclosporin (goodbye
immune suppression drugs). So needless to say I was pretty worried they
were going to get me back on steroids again which would probably have
pretty much destroyed my chances of finishing University this year.
Luckily, after a few trips to the Dermatologist and skin biopsies
later, a Dermatologist Consultant took one look at me and said I had
eczema. Apparently its pretty common to pick up a suceptability to it
from your donor after a transplant, especially if there was some
suceptability to it in your family already (both my sisters have
suffered from it when they were kids).
So after a couple of
weeks of itching and having the most incredibly dry and flakey skin all
over my body I was finally given a couple of steroid creams to help.
They've worked really well, although I do have these little
chicken-pox-like spots on my face now but hopefully they'll be gone
fairly soon.
I had been feeling a bit down about the constant
barrage of crap I seemed to be getting. I mean with between the burst
blood vessel in my eye, the steroid effects, the IBS, the throat
infection and now this skin thing it felt like it was just going to be
one thing after another. I know it sounds ridiculous to complain about
stuff like this when you've been through so much horrendous Chemo and
treatment but I always managed to put a positive slant on that stuff
because I knew it was what had to be done to make me better. Now it
just feels like, having been through all that crap, it isn't really
fair to keep on getting these little set backs. I suppose its partly
because I expected to be right as rain a couple of months after my
transplant, I wasn't really prepared for the long slog of recovery.
Still,
like I said, I'm really starting to feel normal again now. I'm getting
Uni work done, going to the gym to get my strength back and only going
in to the hospital once a week. Now if I could just stop itching and
get some more sleep...
