Transplant Day -9...here goes.....

Hi Everyone,

Hope everyone is well and thanks for joining us.

Well, a good day by all accounts here at Royal Manchester. Phoebe has coped incredibly well during and since her first dose of chemotherapy today. There has been no real issues today with temperatures or vomitting although Phoebe has said that her back and legs have ached.

The conditioning therapy used is not as strong as some types and so we hope that she continues with this progress throughout. As the title shows we are at day -9 and this follows on each day until we reach -1 being a rest day for Phoebe. The following day is day 0 - transplant day and this will be on August 27th. Our amazing donor will actually be donating on August 26th and this will then be transported up to Manchester to be prepared for transplant the following day.

Late morning, Phoebe was in fine form eating and drinking well. Here she is using her new birthday Peppa Pig head phones on due to our lovely domestic lady Joan hoovering our room, its something Phoebe has not experienced before and she found the whole thing rather amusing...here she is having a good chuckle!!!

During the afternoon, Phoebe became a little unsettled and after observations taken during the four hours of chemo, Rob decided to treat a slightly raised blood pressure which may be due to the steroids. The steroid, Dexamethasone which has given Phoebe her hearty appetite will start to be reduced during the course of this week. There have been further medicines introduced today and Phoebe did remarkably well. As you may remember this was the case for a while during the previous bone marrow transplant before Phoebe needed to have a nasogastric tube for feeding and medication.

Over the next few weeks we really hope Phoebe will continue to deal with the copious amounts of medicines to take and avoiding the tube...we shall wait and see.

Late afternoon, Phoebe decided to paint some wonderful pictures and do a tad of sticking, we will let you see these on tomorrow's update..

You may remember yesterday, we talked about Phoebe having a further MRI scan to act as a baseline before transplant. We were discussing the fact that the appointment was 5pm and she would need to be sedated, meaning fasting for a good 6 hours...well, due to Phoebe having her first dose of chemo which is noted for making the patient feel unwell along with Phoebe no longer having visual disturbances and being well at the moment, it was decided to leave the MRI scan as regardless of outcome, we would continue with the transplant. Rob reassured us that he was happy to cancel this and press on with treatment.

A quick hello to all our new bloggers who have recently joined us...especially our old family friends, Fred and Carol Bloor xxx

Thanks once again to everyone for the incredible support...we are truly humbled xxx

For now, rest easy.
Much love
Lynn, Ade, Phoebe and Spirit Eleanor xx