Well yesterday, I was admitted to Salford Royal for day one of the second round of Lemtrada.

Once I’d managed to get on the ward which is a different one to last year and like Fort Knox, I was showed to my bed. Unlike last year, I’m on a general neurology ward, with a lot of long term patients. Dave was asked to leave until visiting hours at 2pm as it’s an all female ward and at that time of morning people are just getting up and being cleaned etc. So I was taken aback slightly as I thought I knew what to expect but that wasn’t meant to be!

If you’ve followed my whole Lemtrada journey so far, you may remember that last year I had no end of problems with my blood tests and cannula. My veins were pretty deep, the first attempt blew and I had a massive blood bruise on my arm, the first one that actually made it in wasn’t flushing properly. When my blood’s were taken the haemolised (clot) before they got to the lab for analysis so I needed more taken and I never actually ended up getting hooked up until about 5 ish.

Yesterday was far more successful. Alex was the man and got my cannula in first attempt and it’s in a really good, non-intrusive place too. It didn’t particularly hurt either so hopefully that fear is over!

Waiting for lunch I had a catch-up on Sunday night’s Love Island and did my old favourite habit of binge watching Friends, despite the fact I have loads of other stuff I need to watch!

After lunch I finally got hooked up at 2 ish. Dave re-visited and appeared with salt and vinegar pringles and chocolate, because this, is what lunch was:

Yes, you are looking at mash, carrots and a plain omlette. The veggie options here don’t leave much to be desired to say the VERY least. It went down, but only because I was so damn hungry!

The first part of the infusion was the steroids. I immediately reacted to this with a hint of a rash appearing along with a tight chest. That awful bitter taste like cheap bad tonic (the 39p stuff in plastic bottles!) re-appeared as if on cue within 10 minutes. Kat is a rockstar though and had bought me A LOT of mint tic tacs to take the edge off. Combined with the pringles it wasn’t so bad.

Like last year, I’m downing water like it’s going out of fashion, but my bladder fully behaved itself and my toilet trip count was down from last year’s 157 on day one to about 10 this year!

Once you get put onto the Lemtrada infusion they observe you like crazy to start off. For the first two hours they check your temperature, heart rate and blood pressure every 30 minutes. Then you have one an hour later, one two hours later and final one four hours later. Because of the time that my infusions started, my last observation was a late one at 22.45, which I was pretty incoherent for as I was so damn tired!

During my infusion I felt awful. Achey hips, blinding head ache, so so hot (unberably so) and just wanted to sleep. At best you can only doze as you’re constantly being checked on and you’d be surprised just how much is going on around you.

Dinner time came before my final infusion had finished…Dave was highly amused by “orange juice” starter. Can’t understand why. It was a massive treat after drinking so much water! And now ladies and gentleman, I present to you my main course…

Here, you are looking at saute potatoes, green peas and a cheesy pasty. Which doesn’t sound too bad, albeit a bit yellow. But the pasty wasn’t Carr’s or Galloway’s and quite frankly did not cut the mustard for this plastic Northerner!

Infusion finally finished about 8.30 and the relief to be detached from Bleepy McBleeperson was huge. A couple of hours after, I finally cooled down, my headache alleviated and I managed to have a snooze. I obviously woke up in time for Love Island and my favourite meal of the hospital day – TEA AND TOAST!!!

Final observations for the day all turned out good (apart from my blood sugar, but I’m pretty sure that was the fault of the orange juice and tic tacs!)

My lovely Reiki friends sent me some healing throughout the day which I’m so so grateful for, and I finished off my day by “reiki-ing”myself to sleep.

I had a pretty good night and have woken up feeling pretty good this morning.

On we go!