Day 12: It's Harvest Time

No, it's not time to bring in the sheaves, but it's time to separate blood!

Get this:
Richard's WBC on Friday: 0.49
Richard's WBC today : 29.0

I know, I know. Pretty amazing. All that sternum pain was worth it.

Today we headed to the infusion center at 7:30 a.m. in order to harvest the hopefully millions of new stem cells that Richard's body has been producing over the last few days. I'm not a morning person, so this was challenging. Thank goodness we only live a few minutes away.

This picture looks a little fuzzy, almost surrealistic, because even the camera had a hard time focusing at 8 a.m.

The apheresis machine awaits blood. This could be the name of a horror movie, no? I did not add the blue tint. My camera caught the apheresis eeriness.












Nurse Betsy helps Richard with his green gorgeous gown and blood pressure cuff accessory. He looked stunning.

After weighing, poking and gowning (I can and will make a verb out of any noun), Richard was hooked up to the apheresis machine. This machine looks like it can spin yarn from lambs wool, but it really takes blood from the patient and whirls it around in a centrifuge, thus separating plasma, red blood cells, and "stuff." "Stuff"(c) was the official term (sort of) given to us by one of the nurses yesterday. Stuff(c) contains stem cells and lots of other blood products. Once the machine recognizes the stem cells contained in the middle layer of Stuff(c), it sucks it up into a bag. Each draw process takes about 40 minutes; Richard had six draws.

On the left, Richard "King for the Day" on his apheresis throne. Note the wilted corsage, aka trifusion catheter. More on that later, with a special picture just for Dale...


The courier arrived about 2 pm, and they boxed up the bag of stem cells and the separate bag of plasma (which is whitish-yellowish). The box was taken to Alta Bates Hospital in the Bay Area. We find out tonight how many stem cells were harvested.

We will repeat the process tomorrow. The plan is to harvest enough cells for two transplants--one for now and one for the future.

Highlights from today:

--Dale, Kimberly, Sarah and Gracie The Unicyclist visited.
--I was able to add several more rows to a scarf I'm knitting for a very good friend. This is good news because I started it in May 2005.

Things we appreciated today: Sutter Cancer Center's valet service, foam antibacterial lotion, and caffeine.

P.S. Here's a final picture just for Dale, the man with no beard. Warning: rated "I" for icky.