6 today!!!

Six years ago today (9 July 2015) I had my stem-cell transplant on Ward 11 of Swansea's Singleton Hospital.

I still can't eat these to this day

As I lay here awake in the small hours of my second birthday, I am transported back to that day: the build up, all the paperwork I had to sign as well as proving my identity, the staff preparing the vials of my newly cleaned blood and the overwhelming stench of sweetcorn (yes, really!) as the procedure progressed.

I'll also remember how terribly unwell I was for the weeks and months following the transplant, but the worst memory was the actual room I lived in for four weeks.

It was a tiny space, with a nurse's station separating it and me from the outside world like some form of airlock!  There was no window to the outside world other than a narrow slit which, when I was well enough to get out of my bed, afforded me the only view.

I survived on being force fed ginger biscuits by my sister.  They were the only food I could keep down for long enough.  They had fitted a feeding tube into me, but on the first night it was in I pulled it out in my sleep and my throat narrowed to the extent they couldn't re-fit it.

Anyway, I'm six years old today.  And some would say that's just about right...