Dad

Poor old Dad! He has had a hard time of it lately. He went into hospital on Christmas eve with a very nasty chest infection. He had been on chemotherapy for 3 months and the dr told him that his white cell count was really low (he has myeloma a type of white cell/bone marrow cancer) Well, they pumped him full of nasty antibiotics, which cleared the chest infection, but made him really sick. He didn't eat for 2 weeks, and hardly got out of bed. He finished the antibiotics on Monday, and they let him go home. He is so weak he can't get up the stairs to bed, so DH and DB went to move the bed downstairs yesterday. Luckily they have a 'back' room that Dad likes to paint in, so they moved stuff out of there. They seem both very miserable about having the bed downstairs.

Today, he went to an apppointment with the dr and he is off all drugs for 1 week, to see if he can get some strength back. Then, he has to go on a very powerful chemotherapy which will knock him back quite severely again! Oh dear....

He has had myeloma for 10 years, and this is by far the worst I have seen him. I think he is weaker than after he had a stem cell transplant (like a bone marrow transplant but your own stem cells go in, so no rejection problems) at Hammersmith hospital - a procedure he has had twice!