First Week and Day Zero

I came through to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital at Glasgow last Monday and have been here a week. Initially I was in a holding room until I’d been COVID tested, but moved to my current room on Friday which is very comfortable as it’s a nice new hospital.

I didn’t feel great and had been running a bit hot and cold but never went over 38 degrees. I met plenty of health professionals during the first few days including the physio, occupational therapist and nurse specialists.

Unfortunately the bridging chemo didn’t appear to have shrunk the lymphoma and it has moved across up to the sternum area too.

My inflammation markers have been raised a bit and I have definitely felt a bit poorly as each day progressed with the lymphoma depletion chemo which was from Wednesday to Friday (Cyclophosphamide and Fludarabine).  I also had a couple of X-rays to see what the problem was but I’ve had a CT scan and it seems that there is no infection and the lymphodepletion chemo has kept the lymphoma static, so that’s good.

Today is Day Zero. I’ve had my modified T-cells infused. 

They arrived in a cryo-transportation pod, stored in liquid nitrogen at -180℃ with a laboratory specialist to defrost them.

The room was choc full of nurses, technicians and my consultant, all working together like a well-oiled machine.

The defrosting took place in what looked to all intents and purposes like a bain-marie, and took only a few minutes, after which time the tiny bag of super-cells was hung on an IV Hook and the other end of the tube attached to my Hickman line. Then, in they went.

I had a strange taste in my mouth as they went in, like nasty sweetcorn. This, I was told, was the protective solution the cells are kept in, to allow them to be frozen safely. Once the cells were in, the nurses rinsed the bag through with saline to make sure I got every single one of the cells into my system. 

Since then it has been constant checking of SATS and I’m hooked up now, permanently, to a multi-function monitor. I’ve had plenty of meds to stave off sickness and to pre-empt any neurotoxicity. I’m also now regularly being asked to write and re-write a sentence, and to answer a series of questions: “what year is it?” “what month is it?” “what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” etc, just to check I’m not going nuts.

So there we are. Procedure all complete and now just waiting for the little soldiers to do their thing.