Stem Cell Harvest!

Sorry but the past few days have been so full I didn't find time to update this blog.  I can skip the details and say we are to report for stem cell harvest Saturday 7:00 a.m.

The values for the white blood cell count were:
Wednesday 0.7
Thursday    1.94
Friday        7

This morning they sent a sample of her blood over to the stem cell folks and they said the population density of her stem cells was sufficient for harvesting.  We had to get her catheter replaced with the Quinton catheter which only has two ports rather than three but these ports are larger and are required for the higher blood flow utilized in the harvesting of stem cells.

We had hoped that there would be time afterwards to have a harvest session today but the surgeons had an emergency and Carla had to wait about two hours to get her new catheter.  There wasn't time afterwards for the stem cell harvest.

They required at least two harvest sessions of 4 to 5 hours in duration.  They want to collect at least 20 million stem cells.  They think that in Carla's case they can accompolish this with Saturday and Monday harvests.

After the harvesting of sufficient stem cells Carla will have an appointment with her doctor and then get the catheter removed before we head back to Springfield!  We would like to be out of here on Tuesday or Wednesday.

The original PET Scan (taken during our first week of tests in Little Rock) showed 11+ focal lesions.  The PET Scan done a week ago (after chemo) showed the focal lesion on her right femur was the only one left and it was about half as big as before! 

Basically this is the end of Induction 1.  When Carla meets with her doctor next week, they will schedule Induction 2.  Basically this will be the same as Induction 1 except there will not be any harvesting of stem cells and the growth hormone shots will only be once rather than twice a day.

Fever up to 102 has been quite common for Carla this week.  All blood cultures for bateria and for virus infection were negative.  The APN said some patients tend to run low-grade fevers when they have low white blood counts.  Now that her temperature has gone down we don't have to give the infusers. 

Another happening during the last few days has been Carla's hair loss.  More about her bad hair days later...

P.S. The other BIG happening at the UAMS today was the 3 month premature birth of the 19th child of the couple with the TLC program "18 and counting."