{"id":249,"date":"2010-03-05T16:33:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-06T00:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/?p=249"},"modified":"2010-03-05T19:26:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-06T03:26:17","slug":"done-with-stem-cell-harvest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/?p=249","title":{"rendered":"Done with stem cell harvest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kept meaning to post but never got around to it. \u00a0Well, the stem cell harvest is over, last one was yesterday. \u00a0Went in Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for it. \u00a0The goal is to get a total of 5 million per some-thing-or-other, Tuesday they got 1.7, Wednesday they got 2.4, so they had 4.1 for the first two days.\u00a0 I don’t know how much they got on Thursday but definitely more than 5 total. \u00a0The machine that does it ispretty crazy, shitload of tubes and knobs and spinning thingers. \u00a0Like I told my dad, all it needs is a candy striper pole and a whistle and it’s like a willy wonka machine making hard candy or something. \u00a0I have two tubes coming off my new cath and the machine had 3 tubes connected to each of those, so ya 6 tubes total.<\/p>\n

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The blood they take out they add an anti-coagulant to, it’s metabolized quickly by the body but lowers your calcium. \u00a0Low calcium apparently makes parts of the body tingle, especially your lips they said. \u00a0It happened to my lips and the pads of my fingers, getting slightly tingly I mean. \u00a0They just set the iv pump thing to give me calcium from a hanging bag and it goes away.<\/p>\n

The chair they had me sit in was kinda weird. \u00a0Seemed not that comfortable when I first got in it but I really never got uncomfortable while sitting in it, just slightly then shifted some and was fine. Sat in the thing for 5 hours each time, so luckily my first impression was wrong.<\/p>\n

Had to pee a few times each day but that’s not a big deal, though the room had no door and there was always at least a few people in the room with some talking and some stuff going on but was able to ignore that decently. \u00a0I was also lucky enough to not have to shit in a bucket any day. One day if it was 1 or 2 hours long i’d have been hosed. \u00a0Needless to say, glad it wasn’t.<\/p>\n

If you want to see the room it was in and the chair I sat in, click here<\/a>. You’ll need to be able to play divx\/mpeg4 (if you don’t know what is, just download and see if it will play, probably will).<\/p>\n

Glad I’m done injecting myself with neupogen too. \u00a0For the first two ICE chemos I got a neulasta shot which does the same thing but for a longer time so just needed the one. \u00a0Neupogen just last one day, so after the third cycle of ICE I had to do it for longer any way because it was for recovery from chemo then to up my shit for stem cell collection had to give myself two shots a day for a week then three shots a day since last Friday. \u00a0It was weird, I never fully got the hang of it. \u00a0Sometimes it would bleed a little, sometimes the medicine would come out of the needle hole a little and sometimes they would both come out a little (sometimes mixed, sometimes the med and then a little bit of blood as a bubble inside that) and I couldn’t find a way to make that not happen and could figure out any correlation between when it happened and when it didn’t. \u00a0Just that it seemed to do it more when putting the needle in hurt vs when it didn’t. \u00a0Also, sometimes it would bruise after and sometimes it wouldn’t. \u00a0No correlation on that either.<\/p>\n

Right now over all feel decent, if slightly crappy. \u00a0They figured I’d start feeling better once I stopped taking neupogen and once I was done doing stem cell harvesting. \u00a0Hoping that’s the case. \u00a0Don’t have anything major until after next week. \u00a0Have an appointment on Tuesday with radiation oncologist, I think so they can configure the machine to my body so it will hit the right spots. \u00a0Monday I have an appointment to change the dressing on my new cath. \u00a0Speaking of my new cath it’s definitely more of a pain I’m the ass than my port. \u00a0Can’t get it wet, so have to tape saran wrap or a plastic bag over it if I shower, which doesn’t work very well. \u00a0It also hurts more and won’t heal as fully because it has the hole it’s coming out of and has stitches around the tube and through little eyelet\/hook things that are on the tube so if it gets pulled it will pull there vs the actual hole. \u00a0The pain isn’t to bad and has gotten better than Monday definitely but how much better it will be I don’t know. \u00a0The shower thing is definitely the most annoying and getting the dressing changed every week is kinda annoying too. \u00a0The dressing for it is a clear rubbery sticker thing that they put over it, along with a white disk that is supposed to help kill bacteria and stuff that wants to try and get to the hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kept meaning to post but never got around to it. \u00a0Well, the stem cell harvest is over, last one was yesterday. \u00a0Went in Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for it. \u00a0The goal is to get a total of 5 million per some-thing-or-other, Tuesday they got 1.7, Wednesday they got 2.4, so they had 4.1 for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hodgkins-lymphoma"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqH02-41","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.mrblob9000.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}