New Kid On The Block

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We may be adding a new member to our on line community. My nurse asked me awhile ago if I would be a telephone buddy to a new starter on tx. I said sure, no problem, but you can guess what my next question was,
“Does he have internet access”?
She told me that she didn’t think he did and so I outlined my story and how vital you guys had been to me. It was very gratifying then that when Keith phoned yesterday and I asked him about access to the net he said that he didn`t have it but that our nurse had advised him to get online.
Wow! What a shift in thinking. I know that most of us were warned or at least discouraged to go online for answers – and having seen some of the stuff in certain quarters I can see why. But now with this new wave of online heppers the established thinking is changing.
Well done all of us! But especially to Ron and Jonathan the original pioneers and Martin who has given us the first unofficial hepper website.
Sit there and feel the glow of achieving change in what was, let`s face it , a desert.
I visited a blog directory the other day and typed in hepc and nothing came up. I added my blog to their list and now when you type in hepc one blog comes up, mine. I would urge you to post yours there www.blogwise.com

So when Keith phones me and introduces himself what is his first question?
“What symptoms can I expect”?
I did give out a little gasp at the simplicity of the question that exposed the complexity of the reply.
What do you say? And again, (correct me if I am wrong) but I think all of us have complained at the lack of information pre-tx, but what are they going to tell us?
It’s a difficult one. If I lay it all on the line it may blow him away, if I tell him too little he can always come back later to say I have bullshitted him.
I played it low key but said there were would certainly be some flu like symptoms, fatigue and general malaise and not to plan to do much after your first shot.
Fortunately, he has said he will be online by next Tuesday, his start day so he will have access to all of us. Which means there is nothing that can happen to him that one of us hasn`t experienced at sometime.
Oh dear, I hope I am not tempting fate. In fact, I take those words back because there is always the unexpected.

Shot night was last night, number 9. I`m now into week 8 of tx. Feeling a lot more comfortable with my symptoms and learning to live with them.