The Cancer Survivors Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

how to do at home. Then, after just ten days, I had enough eggs for them to go ahead with the procedure. I’d always thought that perhaps when I was older I’d like to have children, so this was very important to me. Yet, at the time, I was feeling so exhausted I kind of hoped I wouldn’t have the option to freeze my eggs – mainly because it meant yet more time in hospital and less time to myself before my transplant. Mum convinced me to go through with it. She was obviously right and thinking of my future. Now I’m so pleased I decided to do it. Compared to everything else I’d been through, it was a small and painless procedure really.
    I now had one week before my transplant, so we rented an apartment in Cardiff. My parents, Lowri and her fiancé, Simon, together with my boyfriend at the time, Craig, all went on holiday together. This helped me take my mind off the bone marrow transplant, which I prayed would finally kill the leukaemia once and for all.
    The treatment to prepare me for the transplant began. I received two days of intensive chemotherapy followed by four days of full-body radiotherapy. During this week, Lowri was given syringes to inject into her stomach to boost her stem cells, and once again Dad did this job; he was turning into a right little nurse.
    On 29 October, Lowri was admitted to hospital to donate her stem cells – I know she wouldn’t have charged for them anyway; poor joke! For five hours, she had to lie still on a bed while a machine filtered out my new stem cells from her blood. Thankfully, her cells were strong and her stem cell harvest took just one day to complete. At this time, I was in another hospital nearby, still having the full-body radiotherapy twice daily. Mum and Dad visited us both at alternate times. It must have been so upsetting for them, having to see both their daughters in separate hospitals on the same day.
    Saturday, 31 October was the big day. Mum and Dad, Lowri, Simon and Craig were in the room with me. The transplant itself was a huge anti-climax. A line was attached to my Hickman line and it was just like having a blood transfusion. I felt fine while this was happening, just very tired. It was unbelievable to think that this simple intravenous drip meant so much and was actually saving my life.
    Mentally, I found the transplant difficult. There wasn’t too much pain and, when there was, my self-syringe morphine pump controlled it. Again there were times when I couldn’t eat because I felt so sick. My mouth and throat were painful but oral morphine helped. One of the hardest parts for me was being in the isolation room. But the lowest point was when I was told I wasn’t allowed visitors until two o’clock each afternoon. I was heartbroken – this really upset me. Eventually, they allowed Mum to come in early every morning to help me wash, dress and keep me company. I’d not been separated since my first day of treatment and I wasn’t going to be separated now; I couldn’t have coped without my family. They made sure I wore different clothes every day; I even walked around the room to exercise and sat in the chair rather than stay in bed. This really did help me. The rest of my family, who had moved to Cardiff, visited me as well. We all spent hours colouring children’s books and generally being silly; even the nurses joined in. I found this really helped pass the time and distracted me from my treatment.
    The consultant told me I would be in hospital for at least four to six weeks; however, some patients had been known to leave the isolation room after just two weeks. I decided to make this my target and made a countdown chart. Excluding the seven days of treatment before the transplant, I crossed the days off every morning: 14, 13, 12, 11… when I got to 0, unfortunately, I wasn’t well enough to go home. So the doctors allowed me to go back to the apartment for a few hours each day, but I