Puff Daddy

Voluntarily headed off to the Churchill Hospital yesterday, as my Hickman Line hasn't been used for over a week I needed to ensure that it was still OK (or patent as the medics say) and not blocked through things like blood drying up in it etc. from lack of use.

Fortunately everything was fine as in the worse case scenario of the nurses not being able to get it working I would have to have had a new line :-(

Whilst there though I was able to find out the results of my bone marrow test from the other week - it confirmed that I was still in remission and my Philadelphia Chromosome ratio had dropped from 4.5% to 0.06% which is excellent news (when first diagnosed it was around 82%...)

This is thanks to the Imatinib (Glivec) tablets I take daily, however there is one uncomfortable side effect that is exacerbated by the heatwave we are having, fluid retention that is causing my feet to look like bags of jelly at the end of my legs. My feet are too swollen for shoes and it's proving difficult to get into my sandals!

I've been prescribed Furosemide which seems to be working by making me pee like a cart horse to be blunt, which is fine when at home but caused some severe difficulties when we were stuck in the M40 traffic jam I tweeted yesterday. Needless to say, plenty of country hedgerows were saved from drought on the drive back home along the back roads...