Donation Day Details

We got there at 6:30am after not sleeping at all the night before. They took vitals and had me sign some consent forms. They drew some blood to check all of my baseline levels and we had to wait for the results to come back before I could get the last filgrastim injection. In the mean time, the vascular surgeon came in and started to prep me to get the line put in. The process was quick and they used lidocaine to numb the area. They did the entire procedure right at the bedside. It caused a bit of discomfort but it wasn't anything major. There were 2 tubes connected to the line so the entire process was done through that... no needles in my arms all day! That was really nice! Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to move my arms around at all.

My handsome honey being manly carrying my bag 

The blood work came back and I was able to give myself the last filgrastim shot at 8am. Yes, I asked to give myself the shot because I've mastered it over the last 4 days making it completely painless. Per the NMDP, I had to wait 1 hour after the filgrastim injection for the process to begin so that was finally started at 9am. During the process, they want to make sure your blood isn't clotting through the tubes while it's being sent through to the apheresis machine so they use an anticoagulant to avoid that. The anticoagulant they use decreases calcium levels in the body so they give you a calcium drip. Symptoms of decreased calcium include tingling of the lips, possibly fingers, nose or other extremities. Probably 10 minutes in I started to feel my lips tingle a bit so they increased the calcium drip until the tingling subsided.

We were exhausted!

The entire day was just a lot of waiting. I think around noon the lab took a sample of what had been collected so far to see how the sample was looking. They said it was looking good so I hopefully wouldn't have to continue with the collection tomorrow because they were worried about that. One of the nurses told me that my CD34 cells were really high which was a good thing so that was promising. I reeeeeally didn't want to spend the night in the hospital with that line stuck in me all night!  

The apheresis machine

Around 3pm the collection ended and they took samples of the stem cells to send to the lab. From then I had to wait to see if they had gotten what they needed, and if they did, I had to wait 2 hours for the line to be removed. I found out that they got almost twice the number of CD34 cells that they needed so the countdown to 5pm was on! I couldn't wait to get that line out! They took the line out at 5 and the nurse had to put pressure on it for 30 minutes. The nurse literally sat at my bedside and put pressure on my groin area for a half hour... we had a fun conversation lol. The protocol at the hospital was to treat the vein as an artery; since they weren't stitching it shut, that meant the 30 minutes of pressure, and after that I had to leave a 5lb sandbag on the area for an hour. It stopped bleeding almost right away but I had to wait anyway. An hour and a half after the line was removed I was able to get up and walk around and they wanted to make sure the clot held while I moved around. They patched it up with some gauze and tape and by 7pm they wheeled me downstairs while my lovely boyfriend got the car and we were able to go home. The second the nurses walked in at that 1 hour mark for the sandbag I started taking the sandbag off and the gauze and popped right up out of bed because I was so eager to leave (and also go to the bathroom!)

Lee checked in with me a few times during the collection to see how I was doing. He was there for me through the entire thing and everyone involved was absolutely wonderful! The stem cells were being flown out with the curriur this morning (Friday). Hopefully once she receives the transplant he'll let me know and keep me up to date so then I can keep the blog up to date!

Yesterday was certainly a very long day! But I feel awesome today! The side-effects have been gone since Wednesday evening (day 4 of the filgrastim) so that was certainly really helpful so I wasn't aching all day during the collection. I honestly feel completely back to myself aside from the slight pain and tenderness from where the line was.

My cells!

I sent this picture to a friend of mine and she replied: "amazing to think there's someones future in that bag." That really made me think. This could save someones life. We forget how delicate and precious our lives are until we fear we might not have another day. I'm so honored to have been given the opportunity to do this... and how easy it was for me to do it. Sure, it took time out of my life, but it was worth it and I'd do it again in a heart beat.