But not the harvesting we are used to.
Earlier this week I went for a pre-planned admission to Hospital to collect my stem cells, also known as Stem Cell Harvesting.
Late last week I began injecting myself twice a day with a growth factor that stimulates my bone marrow to produce, in mass, immature 'baby' cells or stem cells. The downside of this was it makes bone marrow work overtime and creates a fair bit of bone pain around the lower back and long bones. Managed this pretty well with paracetamol.
I was connected to the machine in the picture on the left with one needle in each arm. The machine takes blood from one arm, processes it and targets a specific part of my blood where the stem cells are, filters that out then returns the remainder of my blood through a needle in my other arm. A fairly painless procedure however the downside was I had to sit still for around 6 hours at a time, like actually sit still like I am in the picture. No bending elbows, no standing etc. Fortunately I did not have to go to the toilet.
With me the entire time operating the machine and making fine adjustments were two NZ Blood nurses, Si Woo and Shem. They certainly made the procedure entertaining with their humour, pushing buttons on my laptop when a Netflix episode ended and even scratching my my back when I got an itch.
The target was for 7.5 million stem cells, at the end I think we got around 8 million which is great because the thought of being hooked up to the machine for another day was enough to make me lose sleep!
Once these cells are tested and deemed viable (hopefully) they will remain frozen and some will be returned to me after being wiped out by a high dose of chemo, scary sh*t I tell ya! I will then hopefully have enough cells left over for a further two transplants, depending on how things work out in he future. It is hard to forget that Myeloma is not curable so those cells going forward will give me precious time with my family while we continue to look at other options for treatment, hopefully something a bit more permanent. The reality of even thinking about a more permanent option would not be possible without the generous donations I have received from you all.
Again a big thank you to the NZ Blood nurses and all of the staff of Ward M5 at Waikato Hospital, they're great people and do amazing things with the amount of pressure they are under on top of resource constraints
Happy Friday everyone, have a great weekend :)