This post was supposed to appear prior to the latest post from Chellie, but did not due to a technical snafu..
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Guest blogger John here again. Today was THE day. Day zero in doctor lingo…the really big show
if you will. Chellie received her
brother/hero/donor’s stem cells this afternoon between 3:30 and 4pm. The process was interesting to watch and I am
glad I was here to witness it. My sister
Kate flew in from Dallas at around 1pm so I had to pick her up, drive home,
drop her off, get Scott, drop him off with Kate, and then rush off to the
hospital for Chellie’s transplant procedure.
Fighting rush hour traffic on a Friday afternoon in order to get there
in time was a harrowing experience but I made it just in time.
Chellie’s tiny room was filled with doctors
and nurses (5 total at one point) and fun equipment associated with the
transplant. They had a metal basin which
was used to thaw out the bags of Kyle’s cells…it looked a lot like a buffet
serving vessel. Next to that was the container holding the cryogenically frozen
cells. The container held five 100ml
bags, each in its own metal container with extensive labeling to avoid
mistakes. As the nurse in charge of defrosting the cells pulled a bag out of
the liquid nitrogen, another nurse would read Chellie’s wristband to verify who
the recipient was. Then the doctor would read the label on the bag to verify
that it was the correct bag for Chellie and all pertinent information
associated with that bag…even the expiration date which was in July of 2040. When
they thawed the cells in the water bath they only heated the bag enough so that
the cells were liquid enough to be transfused into Chellie. Once a bag was
thawed, the nurse would hook it to a large syringe that was about 6” long and
about the thickness of a bratwurst. The cells went into the syringe and then
with the flip of a switch the cells were pushed into a line of Chellies triple
hickman.
Bag after bag the process was repeated until all five bags were in and
the process was complete. The cells themselves were still quite cold as they
entered her bloodstream. Chellie did
experience some significant nausea early on…not as a result of the cold cells,
but from the preservatives used to freeze the cells. Apparently, if Chellie had
gotten the cells fresh she would not have been nauseated during the transplant.
Luckily they have many anti-nausea meds available and they weren’t afraid to
use them.
As I am typing this Chellie is sleeping peacefully and Kyle’s cells
are settling in to the cell nursery that is Chellies bone marrow. Her brother had the same blood type as
Chellie which the doctor said was a good thing because it lessens the chance of
a reaction during and after the transplant. Tonight Chellie will be spending a
significant amount of time ridding her body of the excess fluid they have been
pumping into her but should otherwise have an uneventful evening. It has been 2 months, 10 days, and 5 hours
since we found ourselves on this journey and we have reached yet another
checkpoint along the way. We’ll call it checkpoint Zero.
-John
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