Distance

The years seem to go by so quickly. Phyllis and I have grown very close and I'm so lucky to have her in my life. She's actually moving this month and will be within a reasonable driving distance now! (8 hour drive vs a 6 hour fight!) I'm pretty excited about having her closer so hopefully we can see more of each other. 

She's healthy and doing well. 4.5 years cancer free, a lifetime to go!

What Does It Mean to Live?

Phyllis and I met 2 years ago this month! Can you believe it?! She is doing well and she just got back from a trip to Hawaii with her family. Traveling and spending time with the ones you care about most are what I envisioned for her back before I knew her. When I first learned I was going to donate, my hope was that by me donating, someone would have a second chance at life. And when I think about life and living, that's what I dream about... traveling, exploring the world while being with the ones I hold nearest and dearest to me. Everyone has different ideas of living, but when it comes down to it, we are all human and we all want the same thing - love.

You often hear people ask, if you found out you only had X number of days to live, what would you do? So what would you do? Make the most of today and of every day. Put down your phones and live in the moment. Be present. You'll never remember the best day of technology you ever had but you'll make memories that will last a lifetime and when you're taking your last breath, you'll know that you truly lived.

Happy Friday!

Dreams

It's that time again... time for an update: 

Phyllis is doing well and in fact, just had a birthday! It just so happens that my fiancee and I got engaged on her birthday a couple years ago (before we even knew her! - Crazy, right?!)

She and I speak regularly, maybe 2-3 times per week. We both wish we lived closer but sometimes life and circumstances just get in the way. Hopefully we will be able to see each other sometime this year? Personally, I think Americans work too hard and don't get enough vacation days :p I'd be fine taking a month or two without pay so I could travel. Ahh, I'll keep dreaming. :)

Serenity

Update

I can't believe it's been just shy of a year since the last time I have posted!

Phyllis is doing wonderful and we talk regularly. I flew out to see her in June I think it was? Then I took a trip across country this past summer and made a stop along the way to see her. We live so far apart but we were lucky enough to have several opportunities to meet up. 

She has had some minor graft vs host type complications but from what I've been told, it's a fairly common thing. Yay for being healthy :)

Donor/Recipient Meeting!

I can't believe I haven't updated since 2013!

It is now April of 2014 and I have some wonderful news! Phyllis and her family planned a trip to the East coast and I was lucky enough to be able to meet up with her and her family members this past week. It was, by far, one of the greatest days in my entire life. My recipient is one of the most beautiful people, inside and out, that I have ever known and I was and am still at a loss for words. We got to spend a couple hours together but the time flew by. When it was time for us to go, I instantly felt like part of me was leaving. It hasn't even been a week since we met and I've already decided to start planning a trip to where she lives :)

Phyllis

Well, the one year mark from the donation came and went. I sent Lee my info out right away but considering the lag between NMDP and such, I assumed I wouldn't hear much for a while. To my surprise, within a couple days I received an email directly from my recipient! Her name is Phyllis and she lives almost completely on the other side of the country. We have been emailing back and forth since then and it has been such an awesome experience. I look forward to hearing from her and always smile when I see an email from her pop up in my inbox.

She's doing well and I've even gotten to speak with some of her family members too. She's an amazing woman and I so look forward to getting to meet her and her family and finally give her the hug I've been holding onto for her for over a year now. 

I cannot believe how much things have changed in over a year. I looked back at some of my older posts and was reminded to keep counting my blessings. 

Almost 1 Year Since the Donation!

Throughout this past year, my recipient and I have been able to correspond through letters that pass through NMDP to ensure anonymity. I have received letters from her husband, sister, mother, and son and I get so excited when I hear from her and her family. I just received a couple of letters last week that had been written back in September (there's about a month lag with sending it through NMDP and all).

But now, in exactly 10 days, it will have been 1 year since the donation and we will be allowed to release our contact information and correspond without going through NMDP. I've been counting down the days for a long time but since November started, I've been unable to contain my excitement!

Leukemia Free!

I received a card from my recipient midway through last month. She wrote me to let me know that at her 6 month check up she was still leukemia free! Amazing news! She wrote the letter in mid July so I've come to learn that it takes about a month for it get from her all the way to me.

At this point, it's been almost 10 months since the donation and I get more and more excited knowing that come November, we will no longer need NMDP to correspond.

Almost there!

Hello all,

No news lately but I'd assume that all is going well. I realized yesterday that we are midway through July which means we're 8 months in and only 4 more until the 1 year mark!

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer and getting some time to relax!

More Letters!

A couple days ago, I received an email from Lee with a letter attached from my recipients sister. It was such a beautiful letter... she told me how beautiful her sister is, inside and out and how her sister is such an amazing person full of love, laughter, generosity and strength - pretty much exactly how I pictured her.

It warms my heart when I hear from them. :)

Wonderful News!

A little over a week ago I received a letter from my recipient saying that she's doing really well. She was released from the transplant facility before day 100 and actually could have gone home sooner than she did but her family was sick so they didn't want to risk it. She also said she was looking forward to meeting me and being able to hug me and thank me in person.

As everyone can imagine, I was so excited to get this letter - it truly means the world to me and I'm eagerly counting down until the 1 year mark in November :)

Connections

My recipient had been on my mind all night Saturday night. I sometimes wonder why she weighs so heavily on me at times and then think that maybe it's because she's thinking of me too and our thoughts are connecting. Days will pass and life gets busy and the donation doesn't even cross my mind but then some days I can't think of anything else and I'm amazed all over again at how blessed I am to have been able to be part of such an awesome thing. I wonder about her often and I wish I knew how she was doing. I haven't received an update so I'm going to assume that no news is good news.

Do something amazing today :)

Precious Time

Time has so quickly escaped me. I've been experiencing my own personal struggles lately and have let the stress of life grab ahold of me and bring me down.

Unfortunately, I do not have any more updates on my recipient, but I did realize that it has been more than 100 days since the donation and those were the most critical days. I hope everything is going well for her and her family. I will post an update as soon as I get one.

Engrafted Stem Cells!

I received a phone call on Friday with some news about my recipient. The stem cells have engrafted so she's making my blood cells now! She is doing well and was discharged from the hospital which is great news!

Merry Christmas!

Letters and Thankfulness

I'm currently on the west coast for some pharmacy conferences so I've been kind of out of reality for a few days and was surprised to see I had received a phone call from Lee. I listened to the voicemail and he had just wanted to check in because it has been about 30 days. He said he didn't have an update for me so my heart sank a little with disappointment but then he said he had a letter for me from my recipient! Obviously I called him back immediately and we chatted for a few minutes and he offered to email me a scanned copy of the letters (her husband wrote me one too!) and he's mailing the originals home so I can have them.

My recipient hand wrote me a letter and told me she had just gotten remarried and 24 days after she got married she was diagnosed with AML, which certainly changed their plans. Between the two of them they have 8 kids and 3 still live at home. She thanked me up and down and said that hopefully I'd meet them someday which absolutely thrilled me because I'd love nothing more but to be able to meet her and her family!

Then I read her husbands letter to me and I think I cried more through his letter because he told me what he had to watch his wife go through and that they couldn't find a donor. He said I was the only match in all of the US and Canada and if they couldn't find a match they were only going to do one more round of chemo and try some experimental medications. He told me that I saved his wife's life and I was their hero. This of course turned on the waterworks even more. I don't really feel like a hero, I really just feel honored to have been able to take part in this, but him telling me that means the world to me.

I've been really stressed out with trying to find a job after graduation and trying to figure out what I'm going to do and where I'll be within the next year and this just makes me realize how much more there is to life and what is truly important. I was able to spend Thanksgiving with my loved ones and will do the same in a few short weeks for Christmas and I couldn't be more thankful to be surrounded by people I love and by people that love me.

2 Weeks Post Donation

Well, it's been 2 weeks since the donation took place. The area where the line was is still healing... I have a massive bruise in the groin/thigh area and a tiny little scabbed area where they inserted it. I rested up for a couple days then got busy and was on my feet a lot and I noticed some new bruising and swelling so I had to try to stay off my feet and ice the area for a day or two. It's looking much better now though. It's pretty much the coolest looking bruise ever and I wish I could show it off just for fun, but it's probably not socially acceptable to say to someone "hey, wanna see my cool bruise?" then whip off my pants to show them ;)

Anyway, I haven't heard any word from or about the recipient. I guess I am a little disappointed to have not heard anything yet but hopefully I will soon!

Lee will probably give me a call within the next couple of weeks and maybe have an update for me about her and how she is doing. Until then, I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving and aren't stressing out too much this Christmas season... keeping in mind the real meaning behind Christmas :)

Prayers For Her

Well, I'm not sure which day the recipient was meant to receive the transplant, but by this time she has definitely received it!

The next 100 days are very critical to her recovery. Please pray for her :)

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.

Donation Day!

The day is going well. We arrived around 6:30am and they drew some blood to check my white counts. I gave myself the last injection around 8am and then we had to wait an hour before the collection could start. They put a line in my femoral vein and the process was kind of uncomfortable. The doctor used lidocaine to numb the area and they did it right in my hospital bed. I was totally fine with everything until I started to feel blood trickle down my leg and I started to get a little light headed. I don't do blood well. It feels like a weird pressure in my groin area but it's nice to be able to move both arms. 

The side-effects are completely gone and I'm so thankful for that because it would make sitting here even more uncomfortable. 

We are hoping they get a full collection today so I don't have to stay until tomorrow and it should be ending around 3:30pm. The line has to stay in for 2 more hours after the collection and then once they remove it I have to wait around for another couple of hours to be monitored but then I can go home hopefully. :)

6 am

It's 10 minutes to 6 and neither of us slept much. I'd say we both got maybe an hour or so. My honey stayed up with me and kept me company because I was so anxious. He found a vending machine and brought me back my choice of snacks when I was hungry earlier :)

I have to say the aches are hardly noticeable and haven't been since last night so that's certainly a nice change!

Anyway, the next update will probably be from the hospital!