So I'd been told that Friday morning I'd be off to a fertility clinic since chemotherapy (what would soon be my primary source of treatment) had a pretty bad effect on your fertility it was probably a good idea head down there and make a deposit.
Needless to say I'd never been to a fertility clinic before... after going through some forms and general admin stuff with the staff there I was lead to one of the 'sample' rooms... now I'll be the first to admit that I was feeling pretty rough, my neck was still aching a lot, I couldn't breathe through my nose still and I was just generally feeling pretty crap. But still, I found it pretty hard to believe anybody in good health could actually feel comfortable in this tiny room with a sofa with a paper sheet on it, a tv with a headset and the less said about the lads mags and crap that was provided the better. After an hour there it was obvious it was going nowhere so we decided to head back to the hospital, I was pretty gutted and luckily my Doctor decided it would be safe to postpone some of the treatment so I could head down there again monday and give it another try when I was feeling better.
The rest of friday was really just more tests and a cluster of information. I had a CT scan (pretty straight forward, kinda similar to the MRI but it only took about 2 minutes) and a lumbar puncture. The lumbar puncture was sort of like the bone marrow test, again they use a general anaesthetic and use a really thin needle to get between the vertebrae in your lower back to get out some of the fluid in there for tests and put in a chemical that hopefully stops the leukaemia spreading there, or helps reduce it if it is there already.
One of the big concerns was about my kidneys, and I should probably try and take a second to talk about what ALL actually instead of just banging on.
This took me... a lot of research... infact to be honest to start with a I had to spell check the word Leukemia a fair few times, that's how little I knew about it. I'll just give an basic sort of outline of it.
Right Leukemia is basically blood cancer and since there's obviously so many different elements to the blood (thank you GCSE biology) different Leukemia's can affect it in different ways. So there's three basic types of blood cells: white cells, red cells and platelets. White cells fight infections, red cells carry oxygen and platelets are used to clot the blood. Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia produces tons of immature, malignant white blood cells that don't fight infections properly, these cells (if left unchecked) will crowd out all the others that's how the damage is done.
So like I said one of the big concerns was my kidney's, when these white blood cells die they leave behind a naturally occuring chemical called uric acid. While this is naturally occuring, in large quantities you can really be at risk of screwing up your kidney's, so I was put on this enzyme called Rasburicase which helps get rid of the excess acid and let the kindney's function normally. So they had to watch my intake and output of fluid's pretty carefully, but so far that's looking pretty promising.
Another drug I've been put on and I'm told I'll be on it throughout the first stage of my treatment are steroids (Dexamethasone) which have a few side effects but nothing really to worry about (weight gain, mood swings). My parents and I did wonder if there was any chance that just the steroids might be enough to an impact without the more intensive chemotherapy but obviously the answer to that was no.
Friday, saturday, sunday really hasn't meant much else in the way of treatment, it's just been a lot of tests, a lot of intrevenous antiobiotics and other chemicals. The good news is my kidney's are responding really well to the treatment and they're working very well, it seems like while the Leukemia cells are all over the place they haven't really had a chance to settle in and effect any of my organs much at all.
Still my main consultant will be back tomorrow so I'll be getting a lot more details and information tomorrow no doubt, plus it promises to be a pretty busy day with tests and that so hopefully I might even have a pretty good idea when I leave the hospital by the end of tomorrow, but we'll see.
For a more in-depth look at the disease and the drugs this PDF is pretty helpful:
http://www.lrf.org.uk/media/images/CALL_7047.pdf
