I'm useless at keeping this thing in some sort of up-to-date state. I'll try harder but here are the last few days in a nutshell.

Veronica and I went through to Glasgow on Tuesday to have a meeting with the stem cell harvest team at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. They basically just talked us through the procedure and showed us the equipment that is being used. All that happens is that on 23rd April I'll toddle across to Glasgow and get a blood test to see how high my CD34 count is. If all is OK I get hooked up to the funky machine for 3 - 4 hours and read a book or watch a movie... i might even talk to my wife. My blood goes into the machine, whizzes around for a bit and returns to me minus stem cells. It's really just a large centrifugal force machine. They then unhook me and take a sample from the bag and extrapolate from that the number of stem cells in it. The magic number that they want for me is 4 million. If they don't think there is enough then I come back the next day to top it up. It's all pretty straightforward. As usual I had the full head to toe medical examination and was yet again declared to be in A1 health EXCEPT for the little bugger in my chest. That's why I hate this disease so much. There is just no sign that there is anything wrong with me... let alone anything serious. I continually thank God that the node popped out of my neck last year because I suspect I would still be walking around with no clue that I was ill. The only slight problem was that I was running a slight temperature (37.8C) but seeing as I had checked out all OK with the Doc I was told to just take paracetamol.

Wednesday arrives and I wake up feeling fine. 11:00 comes and the temperature is back. I called my Oncology nurse at Falkirk just to make sure that I'm OK to just treat with paracetamol. She agrees as this does seem to be a pattern with me. When my WBC starts to come back up I get a fever. It happened all the way through my ABVD chemo treatment and now it is happening again. I could really do without this because when I run a temp it completely knackers me out physically and emotionally. I panic that it is some serious infection and that I'm going to have to go into hospital. It is just so trying.
Anyway, I continue to pop pills and feel cool about 16:00 so I take my temp again to get a base for the night.
38.8C
Bollocks. I'll try the other ear.
38.8C
Ho Hum. I drag my bum out of bed, wash down, pack my begs and head downstairs to break the news to Veronica that I'd better call it in to oncology. She obviously sees the blind panic and tells me to calm down and reminds me that this is "just my thing - you feel fine. Sit down for 10minutes and take it again". So I do and it drops to 37.9C. Another 10minutes later and it i 37.4C. Panic over but Veronica nips out to the shop to get me Ibuprofen. That way I can take two lots of drugs to keep the thing under control as you can mix Ibuprofen with paracetamol.
I sleep all night and wake up temperature free. Woo hoo!

So onto today and nothing to report. The girls had a play-date in the village this morning and then Veronica took them to see an old friend out in Hamilton so I had the house to myself and achieved nothing!
It was a good, calm day! May I have a few more before chemo restarts on the 11th April.