SouthCoastShankly » Mon Sep 22, 2014 7:39 pm wrote:Of course. We all would. Good luck.
Very interesting, thank goodness for the NHS. It's situations like these that make you thankful we have a health care system that doesn't require private coverage
Couldn't agree with you more. The NHS is a briliant thing in this country (speaking from personal experience) the speed with which I was dealt with from initial appointments to diagnosis and starting treatment was superb.
The care I've recieved and am still recieving from MOST of the staff is absolutely world class. I'm obviously not the easiest patient to get on with, I wouldn't be me if I was...
but the care and attention I've recieved is phenominal. The knowledge most of the staff have and the consultants are absolutely out of this world. Some of the nursing and staff and healthcare assistants bend over backwards for you (on a none serious note: when they're fit as f*ck as well it makes things even better
) back to the seriousness
by getting you drinks, stuff from the canteen, TV cards etc (IE things they aren't really there for).
My consultant actually slightly misdiagnosed me at first due to the nature of the desease, the first round of chemo had no effect, he then within days decided to try a different route and the results speak for themselves. He said it was acute T cell lympoblastic lukemia, which produces the same cells as my condition, they are both very similar deseases in many ways and what I have is actually a boarderline/crossover between lukeimia and lymphoma. The misdiagnosis was due to him not seeing this desease before manifest itself in the way it has with me. Its actually more of a childs desease and its rare in people my age. Also, it doesn't tend to present itself as a lymphoma as mine has done, but the speed at effeciency with which they corrected an initial mistake was impressive.
On the positive for me personally, I don't have a philidelphia chromosone (something which negatively affects prognosis), it hasn't infected my bone marrow, it hasn't effected my spinal and brain fluid which it can do (although my brain has been effected (joke)
) and I do have my strength and previous good health and fitness on my side.
All positive. The only thing that goes against me is I'm over the age of 22 (roughly around the age people start to die, and growth has finished, NOTE: this doesn't mean you will die soon after this age, it just means after this age the body starts a very slow process towards death after initial growth) which reduces my chances of a full cure, but I'm not a million miles from that age, and one out of five factors against is not to bad.
They've given me a 60% - 70% chance of a full cure... the odds aren't fantastic, but if they can cure me for 10 years, you never know how far advanced we'll be in that time, it may just in ten years time by a case of taking one pill and you're done so I'd take that.
If I don't have the bone marrow transplant there is an 80% - 85% chance this will come back within a year or two. apparently. However, I have acheived a good remission.