Hello again

well since we last spoke, which has been some time...sorry, Zach has managed to get his appetite back. he is drinking lots of milk but isn't really into eating solids yet. he did manage a few weeks without his nasal gastric tube as some of you might have seen in the pictures on facebook, the mountain of drugs he was on after getting out of PICU has been reduced to a quarter of what he was having.

so whats been happening with Zach's treatment? we were in Birmingham on the 24th March for a stem cell harvest, which is basically a bone marrow harvest. Zach was on a drug called lenograstim  (GCSF) which encourages your body to produce stem cells. normally you are on the drug for up to two weeks before you have enough to harvest. Zach being Zach set a new record of nineteen days on GCSF before he had enough cells to harvest, but they got a good amount. 2 would be the minimum required and they got 2.5 so it will help him even more after his high dose chemotherapy. Harvesting is a painless task which involves Zach being hooked up to a machine via his Hickman line. his blood is passed through the machine which spins out the cells in a centrifuge and puts back everything else. it took 5 hours to do.

as I write this we are back in hospital and Zach has had his first dose of High dose Chemo. it takes six days to get through the high dose protocol then he has two days to recover before an ambulance transfer to Birmingham to get his stem cells back, then we have to wait for the stem cells to re-establish themselves in his bone marrow and his blood count to recover. this can take six weeks in total but as we have been hearing the stem cells significantly reduce that to about three weeks so we will have to wait and see.

the fundraising is still going strong, our justgiving page has gone over £5,500 thanks to some large donations from friends and family. My squadron completed the Lincoln 10k and they have raised £3,250 so far. they have other events planned for the future so watch this space. A big thanks to RAF Wittering for raising over £700 in cake sales. Defending the realm is hungry work, thanks lads and ladies.

I will be updating more as I will have some spare time now we are inpatients again. It has been great to get home for a few weeks and do some of the normal things like getting back to work, running and doing a bit of DIY. Hayley managed to celebrate her birthday at home which was good and we got out for a meal with friends and we were away from the hustle and bustle of hospital.

speak to you again soon