Tuesday 2nd day of harvest

We're in the apheresis room and Dad is hooked up and the stem cells are being harvested. He didn't sleep very well last night. He was trying to not roll on his side during the night because the catheter has been leaking a bit, so that didn't help with the sleeping...and his bones ached a bit. He's been getting so many neupogen shots and that has causes that. He had a good breakfast this morning...but he can't have his usual coffee before the stem cell collecting because when you are hooked up for the 3-4 hours, you're hooked up. If you need to go to the bathroom, the bathroom comes to you.

His blood work from today is good. His platelets are at 81...they were at 99 yesterday, so that means that if he needs to harvest tomorrow (which he probably will), he will need another transfusion of platelets today sometime. His white blood cells were really high yesterday at 52 (normal is 4-11) and today they are out of the ballpark at 82. So those shots are really doing something! According to the nurse here, if you have high levels of white blood cells, it could mean that you have a better amount of stem cells that day, or it could mean that it doesn't matter. We're hoping that he has a good count today, but we won't know until late this afternoon.

Dad's sleeping right now. I suggested putting his mp3 headset on and getting a blanket and reclining in the recliner. It would be great if he could get in a few hours of sleep this morning.

I thought I'd include this photo or illistration of an actual stem cell. It's pretty amazing that there are millions of those going into the little bag here.

Also, here's a diagram of how a stem cell matures. It can go one direction and become red blood cells or platelets, or it can go the other way to become white blood cells (and other things). Certain stimulators in your body signal as to what you need and that's what it starts producing.

This photo is from yesterday as Dad was finished with the harvesting. They send the big bag of stem cells (and other blood components) to the lab to have a preservative put in it and then frozen. But the source they use to actually count the stem cells is the little vial in the front of the picture. At this point it is still attached to the main bag, but they cut that off and put it in another little vial, seal it, and send it off to a different place to be counted. What they actually are looking for and counting are CD34 stem cell markers. What are stem cell markers? Ill do a post later on this subject. I want to get this post off soon for now.

This picture is from yesterday, after they removed the bag of stem cells. This is the centrifuge located inside the harvesting machine. When the blood goes into the tubes lining centrifuge, it spins (as centrifuges do!) and separates out the stem cells. Different rates of spinning separate out different blood components. One speed will separate out platelets and another speed gets the stem cells. What was really interesting was to see all the tubes that she pulled out of this centrifuge. I had already put my camera away yesterday, but I'll try to have it ready to take pictures of this today....very interesting.