News from the chilly big smoke.

Tuesday +19
Last night the TPN wouldn’t stop beeping ‘air in line’ so in the end they turned it off. Daddy arrived bright and early with coffee and gifts. I ventured out to Oxford Street and the delights of John Lewis and got William a great new piano keyboard type toy with animal noises, exactly the kind of thing I thoroughly disapprove of!! His counts have fallen considerably the neutrophils are now only 0.75 and his white cells less than 3 so after some more ‘discussion’ they did finally give him the GCSF. William had a wakeful evening and a couple of new sets of sheets (sick and leaky nappies, if that’s not too much detail!). He finally went to sleep again just before midnight, the nurses telling me that he didn’t need anything else medicine/most likely to disturb him type procedures (except the usual ‘observations’ and the routine checking of pumps) until 5am so hopeful of a few hours consecutive sleep I put my head down but they were back at 2am with some extensive rustling and IV fluids to make up for the nappies so we dream (well, day dream) of uninterrupted nights! Granma, Pappa, Auntie Nick, Hannah, Ella, Mary and Gillie all feature on a fabulous ‘movie’ that Rob brought up. William’s face lit up at the sight and sound of his favourite cousins, beloved dog and seeing Granma and Pappa (A. Nicky was the camera operator). Gillie has a fabulous (VERY short) new haircut that makes him less of a mud magnet and much more post transplant friendly (Thank you, Harriet!).

Wednesday +20
Met up with Phyllis and Dad today for a lovely lunch including wine, chocolate meringues and great conversation. Phyllis was laden with bags from Hamleys full of presents for me and William from her and Helene and George so thank you all very much. My boy is going to be thoroughly spoiled by the time he leaves here and those terrible twos are going to be quite a challenge!!! William drank his ‘Rice Dream’ with Nesquik chocolate flavour (sorry Tash it’s Nestle I know but what’s a girl to do?) so that’s encouraging. He would have drunk more (and was quite cross when no more appeared) but I didn’t want him to overdo it. Today his counts have shot up and we now have excessive numbers of all sorts of things. Even the nurses were a bit incredulous when they read neutrophils of 16 (from 0.75 overnight) and White Cells of 17.06! His platelets (which are unaffected by the GCSF) are holding good and high (409 today). We will see where they level out at this time, so fingers crossed we have still got a way to go yet. There is another (almost) 20 month old on the block now, Isaac so another playmate for William once he is allowed out and about (well, to the playroom that is 3 metres away, at least!) We had an interesting chat with his Dad about genetic disorders. They had been home from GOS for a month following BMT but have been in hospital locally for a couple of weeks and are now back here struggling with GVHD. Nana, a little girl along the corridor is being rushed to theatre this evening, I am not sure what is wrong but she is only about 7 (at a rough guess, I’ve only seen her lying in her bed through partly drawn curtains, she’s only been back a couple of weeks from intensive care) and the nurses said that her Mum will probably not get back here before she goes in, so please pray for her.
Nana is back from theatre in her room and her Mum is with her today so everything seems to be ok for now, fingers crossed (thurs am).