T - 8. Early doors, early doors

Right so I've been admitted to Kings College Hospital and things are starting to get real. I'm on day three of a nine day chemo regime which will get rid of my old crappy bone marrow, making way for  an i/v stem cell transfusion a week today - courtesy of my little sis who is donating. Although it's called a bone marrow transplant, it isn't really one - the stem cells will grow my new bone marrow if all goes as it should.

For people who are interested in that kind of thing here's the plan.

Day 1:   30mg Fludarabine iv
Day 2:   ditto
Day 3:   ditto
Day 4:   3.2 mg/kg Busulfan
             Fludarabine as above
              A loading dose(?) of Phenytoin
Day 5:   ditto
Day 6:  Busulfan as above
            0.5 mg/kg/day Thymoglobulin
Day 7:   Busulfan as above
             1.5 mg/kg/day Thymoglobulin
Day 8:   2 mg/kg/day Thymoglobulin
Day 9:   2 mg/kg/day Thymoglobulin
             1.5mg/kg Ciclosporin

So not a lot of this means a huge amount to me, but I've been told that the fun really stops once I start on the Thymoglobulin.  As well as the above stuff I'm taking a variety of tablets every day - antisickness, anti fungals, antibiotics as well as using a special mouthwash and drops for my throat apparently to prevent thrush -  I dunno what they think I've been up to! Only a very small amount of what I'm getting is the actual chemo, most of it is to prevent/ protect from side effects and infection.

I have a barrage of tests going on each day, blood tests, swabs, X-rays and blood pressure and temperature taken every couple of hours. Yesterday I even had some kind of test where I had to stick a king sized Q-tip up my jacksie. On reflection I think this might have been a stupidity test...