We're finally here! It seems as if this day has been looming over our heads for so long and now it is finally here. Today started off pretty slow (must be the dreary, rainy day...) - doctors didn't round until about 11am and it seemed as if all of the staff were sort of in slow motion all morning. Brian is starting to feel the cumulative effects of all of the chemo, therefore he's not feeling 100%...so his patience with the nurses (and me) was a little short at times. He woke up with some swelling, new nerve pain, and a slight rash on his feet so he didn't really feel up to being out of bed much today. They think it's from the thymo/ATG he received, so they said they aren't worried about it, they'll just be watching it. The thymo is given with a whole bunch of steroids, so they think it's flared up now because he hasn't received any steroids in a little over 24 hours.
His counts dropped again as expected today: WBC 0.1, hemoglobin 8.9, platelets 27, creatinine 1.4. Once again he was ecstatic that his creatinine dropped!
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| Dr. Sauter holding the "liquid gold" |
He received his stem cell transplant at 5:48pm tonight. It was all very anticlimactic (as we expected) and only took 2 minutes to infuse. Because it was T-cell depleted it was a very small volume, only about 20 ml in all...crazy. The nurse practitioner told us that the stem cells should circulate in his blood for about an hour, and then should be in his marrow. I'm just amazed at how this all works...one of medicine's modern miracles I suppose. Here are a variety of photos of the stem cell transplant/infusion (sorry for the messiness of the layout - I can't get the photos to do what I want!):
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| Dr. Sauter and the Nurse Practitioner double checking the cells | | |
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| The Nurse Practitioner giving him the actual transplant |
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| Brian took video footage of the whole thing! |
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| Close up view of the cells |
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| He had an audience - Dr. Sauter, the NP, 2 residents, his RN, and me. |
Awesome! Very interesting, too! Thanks for all the pictures. Praying those cells settle in comfortably in their new home.
ReplyDeleteJanet
PS: love the creatinine levels
Wow! All of that for 2 minutes?
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing what the medical community can do.
Stay strong.
Keith
Love it and all the updates. Thank you. Now it is up to you to stay on the up and up and not get any bugs. This is amazing to me..like when we first landed on the moon. who would have ever thought. You still have that dazzling smile. Cathy R.
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