I'm back from my overnight at Hotel Hope, where I received a "conditioning regimen" of Cytoxan. I'm not suffering any side effects from the chemo, but I'm still groggy from the Benadryl and Atavan. As the anesthesiologist told me last week, "You're a cheap date."
Tomorrow I start a week-long round of daily self-injections of Neupogen, a drug designed to make the stem cells flee from the bone marrow to the circulatory blood. With just three doctor's visits, daily Heperan flushes and three-times-a-week bandage changes for my Hickman catheter, it will be a relatively "easy" week.
And then on August 6 we'll be ready to start harvesting stem cells. This will be like having a part-time job, albeit a very cushy one. I report for duty at 8:00 am and will sit in an easy chair for 4.5 hours. The machines will do all the work of collecting blood, sorting out the stem cells and then returning the blood to me, sans stem cells.
I'll be perfectly content sipping cranberry juice with one of those little bendy straws, munching graham crackers, chatting and reading books and magazines. God only knows how many days this can go on. Some people are able to produce enough stem cells in as few as three days, others can take up to ten days and some are never able to produce enough. Time will tell which category I fall into.
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