Mid- Treatment

Ok, so, I've told you about my first few months on chemo but what I will tell you now is what it's like to be Mr. Awkward!

If you came in to this ward and asked about me, the nurses and doctors would freeze, look shaky and then proceed to tell you about me!

Due to the chemotherapy, your body is unable to properly regulate the production of blood products so when an infection sets in, your core body temperature raises in a bid to burn out the anomaly. Sadly, this means for patients atleast a three day course of antibiotics and whatever tablets you need.

With me however, I turned out to be the problem patient over my first 12 months by having a few high temperatures (39'c+) and then catching a different illness! 

As you grow up, you may remember getting Chicken Pox and Measles and then never getting them again. What I didn't know was that the Pox virus stays within your body but when your immune system is compromised, the virus actually can reappear as Shingles! I noticed a few raised lumps on my stomach but I didn't really make the connection as the tube from my port to the sores were the same length, hence I imagined it was a burn from some leaked chemo. After informing the Doctor, he knew that it wasn't a burn and promptly put me into isolation for the sake of the ward and I was locked away for around 10 days!

My next interesting illness was actually a few months after the Shingles episode. For my treatment, I was being given the drug Methotrexate, an industry standard as it were. However, I decided to play it difficult and instead of letting the drug filter out through my kidneys, it was storing up and it was scaring the nurses. Most had never seen this reaction before, I believe I even predated the ward for this reaction!

The treatment to get the drug out of me wasn't that bad but it was just the uncertainty of what the cumulative effect of a week of the drug rolling around inside me that had the staff worried.

Luckily, the antidote became available and I was informed as to the cost! A cool £64000, heh, I was definitely getting my fair share of drugs :)

After the drug was administered, my treatment stopped so they could monitor me and my kidneys and as you can probably guess, I turned out fine :) apparently there was a mighty cheer from the nurses when I was allowed home as you start to lose your mind looking at the same walls over and over again.

The doctors kindly gave me a week or two off to recover and then they put me back into my standard treatment, with some tweaking but it was pretty much plain sailing into my maintenance period.

Although, that's what I'd like to say.

Starts and Beginnings

Hi everyone.
I've decided to document my life for a change so to hopefully inspire other people who will sadly face the same battle that I am going through. So, let's have a quick overview and introduction shall we?
Name: Dan Homer
Age: 20
Reason for blog: To document my daily fight against ALL Leukaemia with the Philadelphia Chromosome.
What's that?: The chromosome is when the leukaemia cells break off and die but instead of being washed out of the body, or absorbed by the white blood cells, they add on to other cells and create a new protein called BCR ABLE. Pretty Neat huh?

When were you first diagnosed?: 4/12/13
Remission: 15/01/14
Maintenance: 22/12/14
Relapse: 19/06/15

So, in English, after I had finished college, I was eager to start work. luckily, I found an apprenticeship in Middlesbrough as an IT Technician and I was as happy as a clam for 3 months. However, during this time, I began to experience pains in my legs, (cramps) and on occasion, I would overheat and black out/ faint. In late November, the pains got worse so I went to a walk-in clinic in Hartlepool and I was diagnosed with Vertigo. I accepted this but my health declined. My colour went from pink, to grey, to yellow. So by December, I could've got a part in the live action version of The Simpsons!
I was persuaded by my dad on the 4th December to go to my GP and they said I had vertigo too, but that they also wanted to do a blood test.
Now, I am extremely needle phobic so this didn't appeal to me and sure enough, I fainted, which turned out to be a good way to get blood tests done quicker!
After that ordeal, I went home and was violently ill and I was in the bathroom feeling generally crappy when the phone rang, it was the GP and he had the worst news possible for me. He told me that I had Cancer.
For the first time in my life, I was speechless so I got up, and handed the phone to my dad and promptly cried my eyes out. After a few minutes on the phone, dad came upstairs and hugged me and told me everything was going to be all right but that we had to go up the the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle ASAP.
After getting some clothes, we travelled to the hospital and went back and forth between A&E and various wards until I was transferred to Ward 4- the children's Oncology Ward. It was there where I was to meet my consultant, Prof. S. Bailey. He came in and gave me all the information on the blood tests so far and that it was indeed Leukaemia but a mildly resistant strain. (Typical for me, I've always been told I'm stubborn and now my illnesses are too!)
At the time, I didn't realise how bad this was, as whenever people mention the Cancer word, you automatically come up with a death sentence, but when he said leukaemia, I kind of brushed it aside and said, "Will this mean I won't be at work tomorrow?" His reply was no, and that I'd not be at work for some time. And that upset me, as I had just found something I was good at and now it was taken away from me.
Now, unlike Breaking Bad, I didn't have to turn to cooking Meth to fund my treatment and this is the NHS and it's free, so I started immediately. I was hooked up to a drip, and then when my brother left, I was hooked up to a machine that dripped liquids through a cannula, which in case you didn't know, are horrible little things but anyway, and I was escorted into my own private room and one by one, the nurses came in and introduced themselves and they told me that everything was going to be fine. They also introduced me to the CLIC Sargent team, who are around to offer support to patients and families during times like these.
Treatment wise, I was bombarded with various chemotherapy drugs and steroids, which increased my already large appetite, but I was also on specialist tablets designed to counteract the Philadelphia chromosome.
Guess what, lucky me but I also found out that on top of me being needle phobic, I also have a huge problem swallowing tablets, so within a few days, I realised that this was going to be an issue but hey ho, somehow I managed to get through it. After a few days with a cannula, I was asked about having a device inserted under my skin to allow for the fluids to be administered easier. I said yes, anything is better than what I already have. I was given TWO choices. A Hivkman Line, which is a tube that goes into the veins and protrudes out of the skin and splits into two channels, or a Portacath, which was the same but hidden under my skin and had to be accessed via a port needle. I chose the port as it looked better, even though I hate needles, it was easier for me. They accepted my decision and the next day I had the operation and all was good. After 2 weeks of treatment, I was allowed home for the first time, just in time for Christmas and it was the best one I had ever had, as I was surrounded by my family and it was quiet.
Just after New Year, I returned to the hospital and continued my treatment and it was going well and I made it onto remission, which is when bone marrow and blood samples are sent to a lab and looked at to see the amount of  cancer cells and happily enough, they were low, so the treatment was working.  In this next stage of treatment, I was given another choice, either to continue on chemotherapy and tablets and beat cancer this way, or have a bone marrow transplant. I was truly horrified by that notion but they gave me a few weeks to think about it as I'd have to undergo certain tests to see if I'd actually need it and who is a suitable donor etc.
during this time of uncertainty, I decided to get shingles, as my white blood counts were low so I was put into isolation for a few days whilst the virus was treated. This turned out to be a norm for me as most people go back onto the ward to have an infection treated, and that involved going in with a temperature over 38'c and spending 3 days on antibiotics. In my case, I went in with that notion but caught every illness under the freaking sun, which lead the nurses to always be on their toes around me and to get out the book of interesting and rare illnesses that Dan Homer can catch.

- As that's an interesting place to stop, I'll leave it there. I hope you look forward to the next instalment!-