Transplant Day - Happy Birthday - New Life - Day 0

Day 18

I'm really not sure I'll do this any justice as my wits are not in there usual place but I'll give it a go to recap what happened on this most significant day..

It was an early morning of not a great sleep, of course feeling nervous and still feeling those chemo effect so I haven't really eaten much for a couple of days - very unlike me for anyone who knows as I do love my food!

Love you girls - thank you so much!

Most of the morning was spend making sure my room was tidy (well me bossing Paul around) as we knew once things were going to happen the nurses would want to move things around and get started, transplanct time was set to start time was for 1pm.

I had a beautiful FaceTime with my girlfriends back home, they were having a party in my honor!  It was just gorgeous to see their smiling faces and for them to be all to be together celebrating me, with hot chips, chocolate cake and bubbles.  Even though I didn't feel like any of it I loved they were celebrating with a few of my favourite things.

My birthday partner Matt

Dr Federenko showing us our stem cells

Lots of sleeping as I was still so snoozy and then time to vacate the room for it to be made ready.  Dr Fedorenko came and showed Matt and I our stem cells in the liquid nitrogen, that was a bit freaky, asked him to make sure I got the girl ones and not the boy ones!!

Things seemed to happen quite quickly then, time to get those Tena's on, and in bed.  Hooked up to heart machine, oxygen, Dr Fedorenko here all the time with two nurses, Paul in the corner with the camera at the ready..  Feeling so very nervous, trying to breathe deeply and it all starts to begin.  It's a wild wild ride (in the words of Kristy Cruise), with a few rough rides in there as well.  You can get tight chested, clammy, feeling sick, headache and heart rate heighten..  I seemed to get most, hence the rough part but I still felt like I was in the utmost of high care at all times.  I thought it was done when they showed me the bag was empty but that was just the first one, here we go again.. More clammy and sick feeling, rectified with anti-nausea and pills as soon as I mentioned anything.  When my heart rose this was dealt with quite quickly and brought back down with a dose of Magnesium  which was this most intense heat feeling down your body but rectified it quite quickly.  Again Dr F, always near with the 2 nurses who are amazing - even though the English isn't there I could feel their eyes looking after me. 

Always there!

Getting hooked up

Stem cells being extracted on left

Stem cells being injected

Still going

Empty bag!

Headache was quite bad at the end and I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep and so that's what I did for quite sometime once I got the go ahead.

Party Time - well, I'm not sure I would call it quite that but the tradition is to go out in the hall and celebrate and throw the liquid nitrogen and I wanted to make sure I got to do that with Matt and celebrate our "New Life" together.  Also another lovely Russian girl was there to celebrate her birthday with us as well.  Matt's brother, Bryn bought in a beautiful cake to celebrate - only wish I could feel up to eating it.  It was very emotional all round and this is what we are here for, words I cannot possibly begin to express (hence the extra babbling that usual).

Dr F gives his birthday speech

Ice bucket challenge of a different kind!

Cutting the cake

My treat was a big Caramello Koala from Sam - saved up in the fridge for isolation!

Lots of photos and big hugs all round. how can I possibly begin to thank Dr Fedorenko for giving me this opportunity to be here and also Anastasia for her amazing support.  And to all the staff at this amazing hospital, they are all so professional and look after us so well.

Now its a waiting game.  We will have our bloods taken each day until our white cell count (leukocytes) drops below 0.5.  Once that's the case I no longer have an immune system and my 7-10 days in isolation begins!

Back to bed