Today is the day, Day 0. TRANSPLANT DAY!! and I woke up at 3.30am!!

I finished yesterdays blog and managed to go back to sleep for a few hours. I didn’t feel like eating I was nervous but forced myself as you need stamina and to take the tablets they give you on a full tummy. Dr F, Anastasia and the nurses all came in to give me a run down of the day and explain how it was going to happen. I explained to Dr F that I can see this egg on my right eye, its like a blurry spot but its not going away. Its like my brain image from my MRI’s and it has these moving dots and can get pretty to watch when they morph into giraffes and all sorts when I close my eyes. At first he said it would be because of stoping steriods it has come back, but I said it was totally new for me so he said it would be the chemo and it should resolve in a few days.

Next thing I was packing up room as they set up for the transplant. Joe and I sat out in the lounge waiting and waiting for the morning to pass then it was time to get started. I had to fast from 12pm. I didnt realise I was meant to wear a diaper again today and that I wasnt to wear any pants lol. So once I understood this it was on the bed and I was connected to heart, bloodpressure and pulse monitoring. They gave me something first which made me feel sleepy and connected me to a drip. Joe went to check on Kristoffer and he was the same. Then it was time to start. I think it was 2pm. Dr F was overlooking the procedure, Sasha the nurse was assisting, I dont know the other guys name (I will have to ask) but he was administering the stemcells and Anastasia was here too. Joe was at the end of the bed filming and where I could see him. It was show time.

You can taste the stemcells going in, it is a tomato sauce (like legos puree) taste, it is bad but not too gross. There is this increasing pressure on your chest when the syringe empties mine was from my shoulders to my tummy. My tummy was burning, like I felt hungry and my legs went really numb and sore at the same time. I never felt like I wasn’t able to breathe or was panicky, my blood pressure rose and they gave me some pain killers for my legs and then I had a headache. I was also very sweaty. At the end of the first bag I thought it was finished then, I had another whole bag of stemmies to go. Same thing, they are watching the monitors and checking you are ok with every syringe that goes back in. I would have thought the whole procedure was perhaps 30 mins from start to feeling myself again. It was done! Was so very intense, but very very managable and it is something that needed to be done.

I drifted off to sleep and Anastasia came to wake me up for my new life welcoming party. When I got up, I walked out into the lounge and everyone was there. There were some new faces and it was very daunting and hard to recognise everyone with the face, hair nets and gowned up etc. I needed to go to the bathroom but had to have my first one in my nappy, it is such a strange concept to try and go in the nappy. So I went back out and I’ll deal with that later. We were all waiting for Joe to come back with the pizza for the celebration. Once he finally arrived Dr F said some beautiful words and welcomed Kristoffer and I into the new life patients of Pirogov with the iris badge they give to all transplantees. He also said those fantastic words of 100% success for us both as we are at the right stage for it. Then we got to throw away the dry ice that our stemmies well frozen in. Such a relief and a cleansing moment!

Once I had eaten my pizza it was time to tackle this toilet issue. I needed to go, but my brain wasn’t letting me. It was so weird, finally I managed to do some then TMI sorry I had to finish on the actual loo as it started running out. But it wasn’t a good colour and was bloody urine so I needed to have a flush to make sure everything is going out the right way. For the next couple of hours I was hooked up to a drip and they were giving me stuff to make me wee and checking every time till there was no more blood colour in it.  This continued til about 9pm while I was drifting in and out til they were happy and then I was sleep for the night.