More medical stuff

Just realized how long it's been since I gave y'all a medical bulletin.
No doubt youj're on tenterhooks; Is he still on the Azathioprine? Has
he recovered from his ordeal? Will Bluebell win the 3.30 at Kempton?



Well, here are the answers: No; more or less; and, who cares - this is
the present, and it is up to us to make it as beauteous as possibl.
(one for you, there, Henry)



So I am no longer on the Az. Oh, no. Now I am on 6-mercaptopurine, or 6-MP as I
like to call it. I got a little freaked when I first started on it,
though, I must admit. I made the mistake of reading the little leaflet
which comes with the pills - you know the one, it's the one which lists
all the side-effects and normally reads like a complete A-Z of medical
history and is specifially designed to cause heart
palpitations, cold sweats, blurred vision, hairloss, etc... This one
was no exception, but best of all it started with the following
statements: "This medicine is a cytotoxin. It is used in chemotherapy,
and the treatment of cancer."

Hmmm.... is it used for anything else? Nope, nothing else was
mentioned. I got a little freaked at that point, I must admit.
Luckily, although colitis wasn't mentioned in the 6MP literature, the
Azathioprine leaflet mentions 6MP as an alternative, so I figured that
was okay. (Eventually, I checked with my consultant and it was fine. Of
course).



But anyway. I've now been on the 6-MP for about 3 weeks, and I've been
perfectly fine. Admittedly, I'm still just on the tail-end of the
steroid course which started way back when I was in hospital, so that's
gotta help. In fact, for the moment it's enough that the 6MP isn't
giving me any troublesome side-effects - I'm not actually expecting any
benefit from it for at least another six weeks. They say it takes up to
3 months to kick in, but my sister was on something similar for her
arthritis and it took longer than that for it to work for her, so I'm
expecting it to take a while.



In the meantime, it's not as if I've been taking it easy, what with
Festival stuff (and a little romance ;). So in generally, I'm a happy
bunny. I seem to be keeping up with everyone, which is pretty much the
only way I can find to judge my progress.