Smile ... you're on chemo-camera

This pic is of Mom's Last Dinner before her big day. From left to right: Aunt Della, Aunt Colleen, Mom, Dad. So Day -3 was alright for mom. She had chemo at about 2. They brought it in to her and hooked her up. She did really well. The chemo lasts for about 20 minutes and so far, knock on wood, no nausia or other adverse reactions.
The chemo is on the left, the antibiotic is on the right. They just give a broad spectrum of antibiotics to prevent infections since Mom will not be able to naturally fight them.
And they are nice enough to label what they are giving her... nice!
So far the only reaction she is having is of the steriod they are giving her. She had some reactions to it when she took it earlier too. Her blood sugar is high and they are giving her insulin; we hear that only one person out of the 8 who is on it right now has normal blood sugar. This is kind of a pain for her since they are checking her every 2 hours and shooting her up. So that brings us to the second thing the steriods are doing for her: insomnia. She did not sleep so much last night and when she called me a few minutes ago she said she was ready for a nap. When she took this steriod before with her other chemo she would get a lot of energy for Saturday - Monday and then crash Tuesday and Wednesday. She did not sleep well then either.

But I am very happy that she is doing so well right now. Her nurses are really great with her. Her room is pretty boring so we are going to decorate it over the next few days. She also did not have a DVD player so I am taking her one of mine today. But her spirits are high and she was up walking the halls a few times yesterday.

Phase 2 - The Transplant Day -3

Today is Day -3 for Mom. She needs to be at the hospital at 9 this morning. They will show her to her room and then she has today and tomorrow of chemo. The doctor told us yesterday that the kind of chemo they are giving her is fast acting and that within 12 hours of administering it her immune system will be dead and the chemo will be out of her system. They give her one day off (Thursday) to kind of regain some strength and then on Friday (Day 0) she will be given her 3+mils of her stem cells back. I do not really know what the measurement of 3 mils is in relation to the amount of blood that we have in our body (5 liters or so) but they bring in her frozen stem cells and thaw it right in her room, hook her up, and that is her transplant. However, they have mixed a chemical in with her stem cells that can be harmful to those of us not getting the transplant. For example, Katie my pregnant sister in law, can not visit with her for a little while, and the babies are going to stay away. In the next few days Mom will have a few whole blood or platelet transfusions to help build her blood up faster to what it should be. They used to give white cell transfusions but stopped because while it brought the immune system back up 2-4 days faster, the white cells tend to clot in the lungs and heart which is too dangerous.

How is Mom? Well over all I think she is just fine! We all, except for Colleen's hubby Brad who had to work, went to dinner last night at Red Lobster. I told Mom she could go anywhere she wanted and she chose Red Lobster because she really likes the cheese biscuts they bring out. Her sister's (my aunts) Colleen and Della came with us too. Aunt Della had a heart attack 2 weekends ago and is doing really well. Aunt Colleen told her they needed to come because she needed to learn to eat and like fish.

After dinner Mom and I went home and packed a bag for her stay. She has pj's that open in the front so she does not have to wear the hospital gowns and slippers of her own. We also packed her 2 television series she liked from the 90's so she could watch them. She took some knitting and I will take up some painting projects for her for after her transplant. She has a few books as well, so I think she is as set as she can be for a 3 week stay!

Cancer Walk Photos

Here are the pics from the Cancer Walk on October 11 (Happy Birthday Barry!) It was cold, it snowed a little that day! From left to right Colleen, Patrick, Brad, Katie, Debbie, Barry, Liz, Candice, me, Dad and the babies down front are Lottie and Ainsleigh. Mom's treatment prevented her from coming and Everett was sick.
Lottie bundled up ready to go.
Ainsleigh has the coolest wrap to keep her toes warm.
And we're walking, we're walking...
My chum Carrie gave me some pink hairspray and this is what we did to Patrick with it. Colleen and I tried to do our whole head with it. It looked pink on her, red on me.

The walk was fun. I ran into Damon Yauney from Fox 13 news. Damon and I did a show together a few years ago, Oklahoma. He was Curly and I was Aunt Eller. So we walked together for a minute and he said, "I was thinking about you and Matt (Jud) the other day because I found my cowboy hat in the closet. It still has a bullet hole in it." In the scene Poor Jud is Ded the guns we were using misfired in his face and it was... oh man it was something. Damon does the news in the morning and he had to have some work done to make him pretty again. So it was nice to see him again, and yes he is just as pretty in person as he is on the news.

It was a fun day and I am glad we did it. Our team raised $1,850 for cancer research. Thanks to all who participated and helped us with donations.

Family Hair Evening

So here is the story: My mom, once coming to grips with having cancer, told my sister Colleen and I one day that she did not want to lose her hair to chemo. The first chemo she was on was not strong enough to make her lose her hair but the chemo she will have Tuesday and Wednesday this week will. Colleen, and keep in mind that this is my sister who was Miss Midvale 2000, decided that if mom was going to lose her hair we all were. My brothers Barry and Everett have not had a hair cut in months to prepare for it. Sunday night was Family Hair Evening and the photos are below, enjoy! I know we did! Above is the whole family. Notice my brothers on the extreme sides. Barry is the one with the goofy grin and his hair was longer than everyone's but Colleen (squatting by the babies), Everett is the one with the beard. Pat is standing in the middle and his wonderful wife took all of these photos.
Mom was first, such a sad face. I think she cried just a little.
So what we did was each choose a fun outrageous hairdo first. Mom is a punk rocker...

There is the smile we were waiting for!
Dad has had a mustache for as long as I can remember. He was a brave little toaster and let Mom cut it off. Then Barry did a little Foo Man Choo on him.
This is me trying to do the Joe Biden, but looking more like a Benedictine monk.
We shaved Cancer Sucks into Patrick's head.
Everett did some extreme spikes

Colleen was Cyndi Lauper circa Girl's Just Wanna Have Fun/True Colors era.
And Candice's hubby Hutch even joined in the fun...
Barry wanted a Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek... look at his daughter's face looking at her daddy... priceless. Right after this she burst into tears.
What no one tells you is that this itches!!
Colleen the beauty queen with her one braid up front. Business up front, party in the back!

Colleen with her family right after. Brad was a sport about his wife losing her hair. Colleen looks great even bald, if I did not love her so much...
Barry looking so preeetty in a hat that Mom's friend Mirriam sent her.
Thanks Mirriam for the hats, they are so soft!!
The crew all bald now.

The crew plus Hutch, thanks for being a part of our fun Hutch!
Mom and Dad, seriously without a stache he looks 10 years younger!
Barry grabbed my head and asked if it felt like velcro...
It does....

So that was our fun night... FHE can stand for more than Family Home Evening...

Explaination

Someone asked me why I was putting a lot of information on this blog about Mom's treatment for cancer and why I am posting so often. The answer is simple: Mom is telling her friends to check here for updates on her progress which is cool with me. Not only does is give me an outlet for expressing somethings, but also am able to provide that service for her.

In about two hours our family is having Family Hair Evening (FHE) and Mom promised her Seattle friends pictures. Hopefully they will be up tomorrow. I have been meaning to put up pictures of the walk for over a week now. By the way Mirriam thanks for the hat! It is so soft that I am excited to wear it on my soon to be cold head!

I am just excited I had one last really good hair day today!

By way of one more explination: during phase 2 the days start as a negative. When mom goes into the hospital it will be day -3. Day 0 is her transplant (Friday) and then they start counting up from there. They also call Friday her birthday. I will need to ask why. Monday we have one last meeting with the BMT team as a family before she is admitted Tuesday.

The Harvest is Over

Mom was told by the BMT team that her harvest is over. She was able to harvest enough for 2 transplants not 3 but the process is just beating her up enough that they feel it best to call the harvest good enough. So she gets the weekend off. Tuesday she will check into the hospital for the next 3 weeks. The next phase of the transplant is Phase 2 - The Transplant.

I am proud of you Mom! I know this has been harder on you than I am sure anything else you have physically gone through. You are my hero.

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.

Caught up

I have not been lurking on blogs lately. I just caught up with over a week's worth of blog reading... you all had a lot to say! I am also sitting in my office right now trying to find the motivation to work. I can not find it! I work for a company that sells air and heat systems but we can not seem to get ours to work right. Yesterday it was 80 in our offices so I brought a t-shirt with me just in case it was hot again. Today it is 65. A nice happy medium would be nice. I have not, however, given up on wearing flip flops for the season. My co-worker told me once that he knows it is cold when I start wearing actual shoes and socks. Who needs Mark Eubank's White Snow-coat when you have Stephanie's flip flops?

By the way Mom is about 40% done with her stem cell collection. This is good news!