Harvest Update

Day 5 (Tuesday) began the harvest. It went really well. The goal is to hopefully get 15 units, but they would settle for 10. Today she was able to produce just under 3. This is processing 15 liters of blood in about 3 hours. The blood is taken out of one port in her central line, spun through a centrofuge to separate the various elements of the blood. The stem cells and a bag of platelets are kept out and the rest is combined back together and put back into Mom using another port in her line. At night she sleeps best upstairs in her recliner so I am camped out in the other one so someone is with her all night in case of an emergency. The only concern was her O2 levels were a little low in her blood so they sent her home with oxygen and she slept well. 6 hours is more sleep that she has had in some time.

Day 6 (Wednesday) Another good day of harvest. There were some power outages at the hospital so the machines were working on emergency power. She was able to get just over 1 unit. My brother Barry came over to spend the night with her so I could sleep in my bed for a night. Mom is really tired. Really, really tired.

Day 7 (Thursday) Not such a great day. Mom's tube inside her leading to the vein has a pin prick in it that caused her to bleed into her chest. They caught it early, thankfully, but the loss of blood made her really light headed and they had to take her off the machines and up to radiology to have her line replaced. They put her in a bed in the BMT (Bone Marrow Transplant) Ward to recoup a little and feed her some lunch. We took her back down to the Apheresis department about 2. Apheresis is the process to harvest the cells. They were able to hook her back up to the same bags as earlier so none of her earlier blood was lost. They processed 10 liters of blood and we do not know the counts for her collection yet since she finished to late in the day. The bruise in her right chest is impressive! I took her home around 4 and got her settled in for the night and then had a night out with Candice. My sister Colleen came over to spend the night. Around 10 I got a text that Mom's line was bleeding and they were taking her up to LDS (this is the hospital) and Colleen's daughter was home with my brother Everett. So I went home to help take care of Lottie while Colleen and Dad were with Mom. Around 1 they decided to admit her, Colleen stayed with Mom, and Lottie and I had a big girl sleepover (well as best one can with a 5 month old) Mom's line bled all night until about 5 this morning when it started to clot. They are exploring the option to move it to the left side of her chest and close up the right side. We have been told that they think she can still harvest today. If they can harvest today and tomorrow she might have enough to stop the harvest and just get on with the transplant; at least this is what we are praying for. It really is taking a lot out of her. But she is a fighter and I know she can come through all of this crap and get healthy.

Below is a picture of what she gets hooked up to for the harvest. The bag on the right with the red is her stem cells. The one just to the left of it is her platelets. There is a bag of liquid used to help with the harvest and another bag of liquid that is mixed with the blood that goes back into her body to help so it does not clot wrong.