Day-3//Look at All Those Stem Cells!!

Woohoo! Today was a successful harvest day for me! A doctor came in this morning to check my blood to see if I was ready for stem cell collection and then we waited around anxiously for an hour before we got word that I was ready. I rode to the hospital with two other patients whose levels were also on target and let me say-thank goodness for the picc line! It made it so easy to get hooked up to the apheresis machine and then I was free to relax and surf the web while my roommate Abul had to squeeze a stress ball the whole time. I also finished a lot sooner than the other two patients who didn’t need picc lines. Silver linings! 

Completed stem cell collection!

Two other patients were told to come back tomorrow for their stem cell collection because their numbers weren’t quite where the doctors wanted them to be so they are going to give their bodies another night to pump out those stem cells and they’ll have they collection tomorrow before chemo. 

I’m all done for the day so Gaby is making some soup for late lunch and then I’m going to try to get some rest. Sleeping with these tubes in is a challenge!! I’m not in nearly as much pain as I was yesterday, my neck is just very stiff. The pain reminds me of when I totaled my car in high school and experienced whiplash for the first time. You don’t realize how often you use neck muscles for every day tasks until it hurts to get out of bed, or sit up, or lay down, or turn your head…I could go on. You get it. Having this picc line is a real pain in the neck 😉

Here’s an early morning picture of me with my picc line. The two tubes coming out are all wrapped up to keep them dry and clean. 

Tomorrow and Saturday are my last chemo days and then Sunday will be transplant day, my “stemmie birthday”!! Then I get the picc line out! I might go ahead and shave my head on my stemmie birthday to get that over with before I go into neutropenia which usually starts 2 days after transplant. 

It’s been a good day. Now it’s time to rest and relax. 

¡Adiós!