Harvesting

Has begun. But first I’ll let y’all know the liver biopsy went well, no complications, no results till next week. Now the weird part to that is Dr. Krobling (harvest guy) took us off – glucosamine (a OTC pill for rebuilding cartilage for arthritis, etc) and his enzymes were almost normal on yesterday’s blood test. This is really weird. So I’m pretty sure no more glucosamine in our meds.

Now on with the harvesting of the new stem cells. Pictures included:

Hooking up the CVC by our Nurse Jeff

The Machine & plenty of bags holding: saline, magnesium (his was way way low), calcium, anticoagulant, empty bag to hold the stem cells that are collected.

He was weighted & measured to calculate his total blood volume, he only had about a cup of blood in the machine at a time & it cycled about 3 ½ times to get about ¾ cup of stem cells. A cycle is the number of times all the blood of his body goes through the machine.

 This is a shot (below) of the magic window wherein a nurse technician watches to adjust the buttons to get set the machine to harvest. She said this was the best pic she had seen. LoL Anyways the tube on the left has a very rhythmic wave sort of like rick rack, the right tube has a rose colored tint, that means it’s working. The bag with the collection in it looks like tomato soup a red sorta orange color. Sorry if too graphic for ya.

  

It took about 4 hours for the process once hooked up to the machine, takes about an hour to hook up & get the numbers etc. worked out. About 15 minutes to unhook. We will be doing this today Thursday & Friday, not sure if we do it on Saturday.

  

And that’s about it for the medical update. Well I will tell y’all that it makes me cry like a little kid when I have to give him the Neupegen (sp?) shots 2 every day. Cripes the needle is huge & long.

Any who can’t get any video in the Aphesis room, just whining about this. See ya when I can.

xoxo

And please continue your prayers, positive vibes and goodness coming our way, thank you so very much for all your support.

Happy Art’ing Y’all

UPDATE:  4.8 from this session & 3.4 from the next day - WE HAVE HARVESTED SLIGHTLY OVER THE AMOUNT WANTED.