Really successful harvesting!!

Bigtime WOOO here! Sorry I'm late in reporting this, but my collection went beautifully!! With a goal of 5 million, they collected 7,800,000 IN ONE DAY!!! Now how 'bout THEM apples?!?!

On Monday, Lorraine and I got up early to go to the hospital to get my neck catheter implanted. It had two lumens attached to one tube so they could both suck out the whole blood and return the blood with stem cells extracted through the same tube. The catheter implantation was performed under a twilight, and because I'm surprisingly (and unfortunately) resistant to lidocaine, they had to give me twice as many shots to my neck to numb the area -- ouch! Further ouch resulted from the freshly graduated newbie surgeon's incredibly tightly drawn stitches -- so every time I turned my head even a little bit, the two stitches holding this rather large gauge catheter in place pulled. Very painful. That said, this little puppy served me quite well, so you'll find me much more grateful than complaining. :)

Collection itself was fairly uneventful. A pronounced calcium deficit required the taking of additional Tums -- I'd been popping them every several hours for a couple of days prior, but my calcium was still very low. You realize this when your lips get very numb, among other things. I found that for a good portion of it I felt very cold, because the blood is returned to the body much colder than when it's withdrawn. I don't want to bore you guys to tears with all the minutia, but it really is a fascinating process. According to the Louette, the hemapheresis ward's Nurse Supervisor, the first prototype for a machine to withdraw stem cells was created by a fellow in the 1950's whose son had leukemia. This father, who then worked for IBM, asked his son's oncologist if the boy would have more time if there were some way to remove the stem cells and sort them, and the oncologist replied that he would. The man ended up getting funding from IBM to design and create the first model of this machine, upon which all subsequent machines were based. These days they're no longer created by IBM, they're smaller and quieter than they ever were, and also more effective. I'm not sure, but highly doubt, that the original machine came in time to help that poor man's son.

Each day that I was on Neupogen (I started on Friday) brought more pain, as these growth factor shots put the bone marrow into white blood cell production overdrive, causing the marow to expand -- and this hurts like a MOTHER! That said, I was very, very happy that they were able to collect that many in one day. Harvesting was assisted by the study drug I was taking, AMD3100, which acts to fill up the sticky parts of the blood marrow that those stem cells created by the Neupogen will return to if possible. Therefore, many more stem cells are free in the bloodstream for collection. Apparently I went into the Neupogen treatments with a high CD34 count, which reflects the number of stem cells present in the bloodstream. Then, when my labs of the night before collection showed a WBC count of over 77,000 before getting the AMD3100 shot, my oncologist on the morning of collection said that he had no doubt that we'd get at least the full 5 million that day. The AMD3100 had to have played a big role in getting me up to almost 8 million. I participated in the study as an insurance policy that it turned out I didn't need, but I have absolutely no regrets.

I start radiation on Monday. I'll get 12 treatments, each of 24 gammarays. I'll end on Tuesday, October....what? 3rd? That will be my last treatment, and then I'll go into the hospital on Tuesday of the following week, October 10th. I'll start out with a PICC line installation (double lumen, so with my port they'll have the three points of entry they need to give me care) and then I'll start high dose chemo later that day. I'll be treated with busulfan, VP16 (ifosfamide (I've had that already and it was very effective,) and cytoxin. This high dose will go on for I think 8 days or so, followed by a day of just hydration, so I go into the transplant fully hydrated. Then the next day I'll get my stem cells back, and this will be Day Zero. Transplant Day! Happy birthday to me in this great big, divine do-over!! All told, I should be in the hospital a month, but if my counts come up before then, I could get out earlier. They have to see evidence of engraftment (my body's acceptance of the donated cells - in this case my own) before they'll release me, and that evidence will be apparent in my blood counts and vital signs. I also will need to display an ability to remain healthy on my own --- so I'll need to show that I'm eating, can consume at least 2 liters of fluid a day, am mobile, have relatively normal cognitive function, and am processing waste appropriately.

I'm ready. I just want to get the radiation over with and get in there to get this party started. I'm all about the "Get 'er done" now. SOOOOO ready....