Great Expectations



femoral line



 The much awaited stem cell collection process started at 3pm yesterday. The entire process took approximately 4 hours.(all of the blood in his body was filtered 4 times)  The doctors informed us that for the collection process to be considered a success, they needed to collect between 2.5 million and 10 million stem cells. .William gave us 2.6 million! As a precaution a second collection was harvested this morning for 5 hours, hopefully we are able to get atleast another 2 million!



William and I are patiently waiting on the final count from today, a good collection would mean that we get discharged tonight. However, we are both aware that a third collection may be required; after all, we only have one shot at doing the Bone Marrow Transplant so we might as well do everything we can to make sure that the BMT doctors have enough stem cells. 

Aspheresis Machine





Aspheresis Process

On thursday, William and I will be jumping on Amtrak and taking a peaceful train ride home to Sacramento where we will be spending Memorial Day weekend with Randell. Neither William or I have ever been on Amtrak, we are both super excited about the little adventure, and I am relieved to find an affordable method of transportation that does not require me driving in the chaotic LA traffic.



Stem Cells!



Aspheresis Machine

Our next round of chemotherapy (the strong stuff ) will start as soon as William's body recovers from this week's collections. I am hoping that chemo doesn't start anytime during the next 7-10 days as  my BFF Erin and 4 kids will be coming to the LA area next week. The plan is for William and I to meet up with them for a day or two of fun and memories at the  "happiest place on earth"  Disney!!!

For those of you that are interested, here are a few short vidoes that explain the stem cell rescue and bone marrow transplant process. The videos are really informative and they helped me explain everything to William so that he could better understand everything. I encourage everyone to watch at least the first two videos as they will provide you will answers to your possible questions.

Autologous Blood and Marrow Transplant at Mayo Clinic part 3: Collecting

Autologous Blood and Marrow Transplant at Mayo Clinic part 4: Conditioning

Autologous Blood and Marrow Transplant at Mayo Clinic part 5: Engravetment and Side Effects

Autologous Blood and Marrow Transplant at Mayo Clinic part 6: Coping