The HospiTrial

Most of this past few days the poet's words have seemed most apt:
"Across the wires the electric message came:
"He is no better, he is much the same."

And "the same" wasn't much cop, frankly.

Today, though, there are definite Signs of Change.
And quite possibly for the better.

1. I'm feeling a bit more human: this is the most important and welcome change.

2. My neutrophils are up again today, from 0.74 to 1.26.  The 'normal' range for healthy neutrophils is between 1.5 and 7, so we're getting there.  Quite how anything inside me can even be dreaming of ever being normal again is a Miracle, given the battering it has taken over the last three weeks.  Though no one has yet shot me or thrown me into the frozen River Neva after dark (I don't think), I feel I know a little bit about how Rasputin must have felt after Round 1, which was the poison at dinner.  This is the Before picture.  I'll leave the After to your imaginations (though you can Ghougle it if you're feeling really Ghoulish).

3. The docs have, it appears, finally taken on board that my system is more sensitive than most to Cyclosporine (a vital weapon in the battle against Graft versus Host Disease - see post Loading the Dice of 22nd Feb) and are not only measuring it daily again, but adjusting it rather more delicately than previously.  At times I have felt like a character in a Kafka novel (The Hospitrial?), my pleas for more sensitive treatment of this particular drug falling initally on deaf ears, then finding some sympathy in authority (see post Progress? of 28th Feb ), only to have the situation reversed again.  I had seriously considered hiding some of the pills instead of taking them, so sure was I that they were causing a lot of my nausea, headaches and fatigue.  But then without professional help, I didn't know what dose to take myself and didn't want to knock it on the head entirely for fear of suffering something worse.   However, they have appeared to accept that it needs more careful control in my case.  Long may it last.