T minus 4

Dad is doing well today. He got through the morning chemo just fine, ate a good breakfast, a good lunch. We took a brisk walk through the med center ...went a bit over a mile. The sun is shining today. Here's the view from the window in our room:

Notice the lovely artwork in the window, compliments of Delia.

If you ever want to view a larger image on this blog, just click on the small pictures and that will enlarge them.

Time has been flying by so fast and I haven't done all the blog posting that I've wanted to, but I have had other priorities. One thing I wanted to get back to was the stem cell harvesting, which was so interesting. The last day of Dad's harvesting, I was able to get pictures of inside the centrifuge, after Dad had finished. The nurses there probably thought I was nuts taking pictures of it all, but I wanted all of you to be able to see it, too!

First of all, as they were harvesting the stem cells, they had this chart of varying colors of blood and plasma. As Dad's blood circulated through the tubes, they pulled a tube to the chart and matched it to the color. The color you see third from the right...a salmon color...that means that most of that consists of stem cells (not all though). If it comes through a dark red like at the right, that would be red blood cells, and the lighter colors to the left indicate plasma. If the nurses need to, they can fine tune the apheresis machine to get the right color flowing through.

Of the 9 million questions I asked, there is one that no one could answer. I asked how many feet of tubing there was in the machine (that Dad's blood was flowing through)..and no one knew. I tried guessing, and to the best of what I saw (without getting out a measuring tape!) I'm guessing there was between 35-50 feet of tubing...that includes going through the centrifuge also. They did say that it took 3-5 minutes for Dad's blood to go out and return to his body. That alone tells me there was a long distance of tubing!

Again...here's a picture of the centrifuge with all tubing intact. The centrifuge is where the blood goes to be separated and in there, the stem cells are spun out into a different tube and go up to the collection bag. In this photo you can see the tubing on the outer edge of the top of the centrifuge. The interesting part is that in the centrifuge, it's not just tubing that the blood goes through...it's more like a belt. It's clear plastic and about 1 1/2 inches wide and the blood goes inside the clear plastic.

Here is the centrifuge belt taken out after the harvesting. You can see the blood that still remains in there.

Here's another picture, more from the side, to show the width of the belt.

This shows the read out on the apheresis machine and what all that means...I don't have a clue and I didn't even ask about that! But proudly hanging is the final bag of stem cells waiting to be counted. This is the day Dad rang the bell and reached the amount needed. A few days ago I did ask the doctor how many stem cells were actually collected....give or take a million. And what he told me stopped me in my tracks. He said around 600 to 700 MILLION stem cells!!!!

Now if that doesn't boggle your mind enough, here's some more technical information about the actual finding of the stem cells..by stem cell markers....how they check them under the microscope...and by the way, they don't count them all (obviously)...just a sample and multiply that out. Anyway...here's the information:

What are stem cell markers? Coating the surface of every cell in the body are specialized proteins, called receptors,that have the capability of selectively binding to other "signaling" molecules. There are many different types of receptors that differ in their structure and affinity for the signaling molecules. Normally, cells use these receptors and the molecules that bind to them as a way of communicating with other cells and to carry out their proper functions in the body. These same cell surface receptors are the stem cell markers.  

Each cell type, for example a liver cell, has a certain combination of receptors on their surface that makes them distinguishable from other kinds of cells. Scientists have taken advantage of the biological uniqueness of stem cell receptors and chemical properties of certain compounds to tag or "mark" cells. Researchers owe much of the past success in finding and characterizing stem cells to the use of markers. 

In recent years, scientists have discovered a wide array of stem cells that have unique capabilities to self-renew, grow indefinitely, and differentiate or develop into multiple types of cells and tissues.

Researchers now know that many different types of stem cells exist but they all are found in very small populations in the human body, in some cases 1 stem cell in 100,000 cells in circulating blood. And, when scientists examine these cells under a microscope, they look just like any other cell in the tissue where they are found. So, how do scientists identify these rare type of cells found in many different cells and tissues—a process that is much akin to finding a needle in a haystack. They identify them by stem cell "markers." In the case of Dad’s stem cells, they were looking for the marker CD34 which is associated with bone marrow.