Friday, 20th May

 Hi everyone,

Jimmy is much more comfortable now that he's going to the toilet regularly.  He is still nauseous in spite of lots of nausea meds but it doesn't seem as bad as it was.

He had a shower after I got to the hospital and put on the new sleeping shorts and slippers that I bought him.  The clean top that I brought was too tight and uncomfortable in bed 😐 so he put his springbok rugby top on again.  He is a bit irritated with everything at the moment.  He nodded off for about 5 minutes and when the sister came to do his vitals he complained that 'you always do this when I'm sleeping'.  But the take it in their stride and commented that he was playing rugby again today 😁.

He gets breakfast at 10am and lunch at 12:30pm so he doesn't eat his lunch because he is still full from his breakfast.  He has already lost 2kg, so they started giving him the shakes today.  He needs to have 2 a day.  So I suggested he has the 1st one between 7am, when they wake him up, and 10am breakfast.  But he says then he'll be too full for breakfast.  He really has a mental block about hospital food.  When I left, the sister said I mustn't stress.  She say his taste will have started going now from the chemo.  She suggested getting some woollies means, like cottage pie, which they can give him.  She says this usually helps to make them realize that the hospital food is actually quite nice and it's their taste that is the problem.  She also said I mustn't worry about him being irritated with them because he is already gatvol.  They're so good to him.

One of the other patients who had a SCT was discharged today after 21 days and Jimmy was very happy to hear this.  He also said that he's glad that it's the weekend.  Prof and Dr Botha alternate weekends and then they only come in at about 10am instead of 7am each morning.  So he says he can sleep in tomorrow.

Jimmy slept most of the time that I was there today and he is was feeling a bit cold.  His while blood cell count is now 0.5 and Prof said they would start the Neupogen injections tomorrow even if his white blood cell count didn't get to 0.  Prof did say he is happy with how things are progressing so that's good news.

I keep meaning to go back to the blog to last SCT to see what the timeline was for all the different things.  But all in all i think Jimmy is already doing much better than he did in 2015.

Wishing you all a great weekend 💗

Jimmy's Neutropenic diet menu for tomorrow