There's Something About Your First Piece.

As many of you already know, I got let out of hospital for the weekend and it was brilliant! So so good to be home surrounded by the family, Phil and Flo! 

Flo spark out on my lap :)

Back in my own bed, and with amazing home cooked food! :) Saturday began with Dad's awesome American Pancakes, and then the lovely Amy Norman came to visit for lunch! Copious Chicago Town pizzas and garlic bread was consumed - so so good! It was so nice to catch up on vet chat too - oh my god, how I had missed it! I need vet talk in my life! Fingers crossed in a couple of weeks I can get back up to Potters Bar too and catch up with the lovely housemates and rotations lot if people are around?!

Sunday was pretty good also, with an amazing fry up for breakfast, and the yummiest pulled pork shoulder roast for dinner. Can you tell the steroids are still well and truly kicked in?! Not obsessed about food whatsoever :P. Was able to go round Phil's in the morning to catch up with his parents, his Grandad, and the ever gorgeous Archie! Was so nice to see them all! The remainder of the day consisted of attempting to reorganise my room, as I now have uni stuff everywhere - however, we are getting there! I seriously don't know how I manage to accumulate so much rubbish! To be fair the majority is just work - lever arch file after lever arch file! Least it means I can keep on top of my knowledge over the next year though! With my chemo brain at the moment, I certainly need to! 

I also received an amazing gift from my lovely Auntie Boo - a nutribullet, to make lots of yummy juices and smoothies and things! Very excited to get using that! :) So, thank you again, so much!

Today involved another trip up to the Royal Marsden for some blood tests and my next lot of IV anti fungal treatment. Cannula went in first time, bled like a trooper and worked perfectly for my treatment! Pretty awesome going. My blood results were also awesome - my neutrophil count was 1.05 and my haemoglobin and platelets were still good, so the doctors were more than happy to send me home again! To celebrate my counts being so good we went out for Wagamamas and, oh my, was it amazing! We had sticky ribs, chilli squid, duck dumplings for sides and I had the chicken Pad Thai that I have been craving for the last month - it was 100 times better than I could have hoped for! With chocolate fudge cake for pudding and a FREE green tea, it was the most amazing way to spend the evening with the family and Phil. 

The awesome chocolate fudge cake at Wagamamas!

So, bring on a lovely relaxing day tomorrow, hopefully finishing off some bits and pieces in my room and various bits of paperwork! Wednesday I'm heading back into the Royal Marsden for some more blood tests, anti fungal treatment and a brief stint until Friday. I have my next bone marrow aspirate and core (sedation very much requested again) and intrathecal chemo on Thursday, and am then due more anti fungal Friday along with another possible dose of Vinblastine. On the note of the Vinblastine, they don't tend to use it instead of the Vincristine to begin with as it can actually suppress the bone marrow more than they like to, yet it supposedly has less side effects in terms of peripheral neuropathies; however, this can still be a side effect anyway... Either way, will have to wait and see what the doctors want to do, and then depending on my bloods I should be home next weekend again. Fingers crossed! Then it's a waiting game on the bone marrow results. During that next week I get put on some new oral chemo and my steroids get tapered down! So that could be interesting! The following week we should have the bone marrow results and then be told what the plan is in terms of my consolidation phase, as it then all depends on how the blastocyte situation is looking, and how well or not I have responded to treatment so far. 

Just so everyone knows as well, now it's probably best to not send anything to me in the hospital as I'm going to be in and out a fair bit, and not actually necessarily in the Teenage Cancer Trust Ward. So home address is probably best for now, and visiting is most likely best when I'm at home :) We shall see what entails, however!

Much love to you all
xxxx