Day + 120

I forgot to let you all know how my Bone Marrow Aspiration and Trephine went. It happened last Friday and was my fifth one in total.
It was fine.
There was hardly any pain at all this time around. Dr. Katrina was perfect and I'd had a whack of morphine earlier in the day so I think that the combination of an excellent doctor and drugs did the trick. She had a brief naked eye visual examination of the cells recovered and was very happy with them saying that "they look very healthy and there are an awful lot of them". This hopefully means that the engraftment of stem cells was a complete success

I thought I'd explain exactly what this procedure is.
First you have a local anaesthetic injection into the skin over the biopsy site - usually your hip bone - to numb it. When this has worked, the doctor puts the needle in. For a bone marrow aspiration, the needle is quite thin. For a bone marrow trephine, the needle is thicker. Either way, the doctor needs to put the needle through the skin, into the hip bone and into the centre of the bone, where the marrow is. If you are having a marrow aspiration, the doctor then sucks a cubic millilitre of bone marrow cells into the needle. You feel a sudden, sharp pain when the doctor starts drawing the bone marrow cells out. If you are having a trephine biopsy as well, the doctor will take this needle out and put the second one in.
If you are having a trephine, the doctor will turn the needle back and forth (hard!) while pushing it further into the marrow. The aim is to get a one or two centimetre core of marrow out in one piece. Once it is in far enough, the doctor will draw out the needle, containing its core of marrow. The needle going into the hip bone can be painful, but it doesn't last for too long. The core is then placed in a solution and looks like the worm in the bottom of a bottle of good tequila.

So, I'm still not eating, although I can manage lightly boiled eggs mashed up in a cup. I am being weaned again!
I am going into the office tomorrow to have a full and frank discussion with HR and my boss about when I should return to work. I'm not up to it right now. I know my GP has written a report so it'll be interesting to see what that says.

Finally, we are setting the wheels in motion for our anti-cancer visit to Boston. We have settled on the 26th June to the 3rd July and have picked our hotel. It's just a matter of getting flights now but things are slightly inflated due to the 4th July celebrations. I'm sure we'll find something.