Everything’s coming up roses

Yesterday’s knitting and crochet should have ended up looking like the rose tea cosy I made last year. And it did last night but not so much after I inadvertently put it in the washing machine this morning on a synthetics cycle. ‘I’ll just bob it in with the baby jacket and crochet blanket’ I thought and in my haste I neglected to register that it was wool. What was odd though was that the roses, which were pure wool, didn’t felt as much as the cosy body. I don’t know whether the fact that they were crocheted had anything to do with this or not.

I should have included something to show the scale but needless to say a very small teapot now would be required.  As it was to be a late Christmas present I’ll need to redo it. I initially thought about cutting the roses off and knitting another base but couldn’t find the right colour as I’d used the last of the green. So I ended up deciding on a whole new colour scheme.

I claimed my bed at the Royal this afternoon (or yesterday afternoon as it is now since dialysis was a bit delayed meaning I’ve only just been hooked up to the two bags of chemotherapy goodies) after B had cooked us a nice lunch. He’d asked me on Tuesday to ask about the results of the bone marrow biopsy but I’d forgotten plus as I said to him I didn’t know if the dialysis unit would have been able to access them or indeed interpret them if the findings weren’t straight forward. When we saw one of the junior doctors earlier B reminded me that I hadn’t asked so I said I would when she came back. I forgot again but not to be put off B asked instead. She said that she couldn’t let us know but she would get one of the registrars to go through them with us.

Later one of the registers popped in and went through the treatment plan and then got to the results of the biopsy. As we knew the aspirate sample wasn’t any use and it turned out that the trephine was smaller than the ideal length of 2cm but results had been obtained from this.

Now bearing in mind that the sample could have been taken from a low plasma point in the bone marrow, but which had been 90% in November, and it could be higher in other places there was nothing! Yes, NOTHING. Well he did say it would be classed as 1% and I believe, if memory serves me right, that for myeloma to be diagnosed from a bone marrow biopsy it needs to be above 6%. I’ll be getting another one after this cycle of DT-PACE to confirm the results but basically if it was this level somewhere it wasn’t going to be as high as 90% anywhere else. Another test was also done with regard to clones and I have to admit I wasn’t familiar with this, and can’t repeat it in detail as the other result was just sinking in, but apparently there weren’t enough cells to do this which was good. He said if they had run the test on a new patient and got these results there would be no reason to consider redoing them.

Like last time I asked B if he was glad he asked and this time he was. I suppose it was like an early birthday present for him.