Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Transplant
Day Zero
It's Done!!!
We found out early this morning that the donor's bag would arrive in StL at 9:00 PM this evening so they figured the transplant would take place around Midnight.
It arrived on time and they had to process it since the donor had a different blood type than Jeff. At 10:10 the nurse said the bag should be on the floor in about 15 minutes. At 10:25 the pre-meds were started and Jeff was hooked up to a monitor.
The bag was brought to Jeff's room at 10:41 and we found the donor's blood type was A Positive and Jeff is O Negative. The bag was hung up, connected to one of the lumens and started to infuse into Jeff at 10:47PM. Jeff had only a slight headache near the beginning of the process which they quickly stopped with some medicine. Twenty-seven minutes later at 11:14PM the bag was empty and the transplant was completed. The nurse left Jeff's room at 11:26 so in a little over an hour Jeff said "I just had a transplant".
During the day we found out a little more about the donor's procedure. For years, the marrow was taken from the pelvic or hip bone of the donor. The donor would be under sedation and then be sore for a couple of days afterward. The last few years a new process has started being used sometimes. Remember back in 2001 Jeff's own stem cells were harvested by Phersis in case the Hodgkin's recurred? This is now the procedure used on some donors. So Jeff's donor had to have growth factor shots (like the Neupogen Jeff gets sometimes) for several days beforehand to increase his cell counts. Then today he was hooked up to a phersis machine (wherever he lives) for several hours while stem cells were harvested.
The doctor was pleased with the bag of 136 million stem cells that were infused into Jeff. Somehow those stem cells know where to go in the body and what to do when they get there. They were also pleased at the rate of speed they could infuse the cells. Apparently, faster is better and they did not need to slow down for any adverse reactions during the transplant. We continue prayers that these cells engraf into Jeff's bone marrow and give him new life. It will take a few weeks but Jeff's blood type will then change to the donor's type.
So we are again at another waiting time. Counts will be watched daily to see when the new cells become Jeff's own bone marrow. We know tough days are still ahead for Jeff but we know we're over that "transplant" and pray we're rounding the corner to healing.
Thank you one and all for the powerful prayers today for the donor and for Jeff. God is truly present in our lives.
love,
Marcia