A Quiet Week - My Chest Stitches are Taken Out

Monday 21st to Sunday 27th January 2008

I have a Monday afternoon clinic appointment at the RSCH, mainly for a check on the Hickman line site, and am seen by Vicky Tindell. There are no problems with the repair to the site and the stitches are due out on Thursday. Surprisingly my neutrophils are high, at 8.6, with the other counts as - Wbc: 11.8; Hbn: 11.8; and PLT: 120. It is decided that I should now start coming to the Thursday morning outpatients clinic on a weekly basis starting 7th February.

We have lunch at the Royal Oak at Wineham on Wednesday to discover that the well over 50 year Peacock family tenancy has come to an end. Tim bowed out in late November and a young couple has taken over, but are changing nothing! We meet Tim as we are leaving and he greets us as long lost friends. Tina even gets a kiss! I cannot wait to tell Mike Pont down in deepest France.

I am back to the Day Unit on Thursday to have my stitches out. They come out with ease. I am left with a small stab wound type of scar. Tina likes to liken it to a duelling scar! There is also still an amount of bruising from the removal procedure, but otherwise everything there is ok. My neutrophils are back to normal this time. My blood counts are - Wbc: 4.5; Neuts: 2.9; Lymph: 1.1; Hbn: 11.8; and PLT: 118. I do a bit of shopping in town before my appointment - a camera case and two long-wanted books. I keep my walking to a minimum as I am still conscious of my coughing, or having something in my lungs that may want to get out (!). I also have a persistent sense of a “taste” of the gunge in my lungs coming up to the back of my throat. It is quite off-putting.

I see that my recent correspondent, John Clark, has answered the question I asked of him on my blog. He found me through the CLL Google Alert he subscribes to. Although I have used Google Alerts for work related things, I had not thought of it in respect of my CLL and learning more. Thank you John. I am pleased to hear that your treatment is going well. Incidentally if you or anyone else would like to make more direct contact with me or other CLL patients, the CLL Support Association may assist via email. Their website has a section titled “Patients Stories”, where my entry indicates that contact can be made through the association.

I hear from the Radio 4 programme “The Material World” of an interesting development involving the taking of garlic (pearls) in the treatment of cystic fibrosis for children. A doctor in Nottingham (I believe) is to run a clinical trial with it. The similarity - in some respects - between cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis suggests to me that perhaps garlic pearls may help me, so I am starting taking two a day. I look up a couple of items on the internet to find that Norwegian experiments on mice two years ago had shown the potential of garlic, but the equivalent dosage for an average adult was 50 bulbs per day! I must ask Dr Jackson what he thinks.

I am still having to clear my lungs at least once per day. I do this on the bed. My physio method is still productive, so I guess I am doing it right. Strangely I am bringing more stuff up from my right lung than my left - another question for Dr Jackson. The physio - or more significantly the attendant coughing - is tiring and I am still having at least an hour and a half sleep most afternoons when I am not out doing something. We have Cath and Jim for supper Saturday evening and otherwise it is a quiet weekend.