Lymph Journal # 56 - The harvest is in!

4/18/2012

Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine undergirded by the deluge of prayer worldwide directed towards the Great Physician (or is it the other way around?) today turned out to be harvest time.   Two days ago my white count was at 7% of the level it needed to be, this morning’s blood test in Freiburg they stood at 128%.  The decision was made to step into the other room and start the harvest. I called Diane who was as thrilled by the news as I was.  The downside was that I had driven in for a blood test and that she would have to hitch a ride to pick up both the Opel and myself.  (Thanks David!)  The technician said that she had to advise no driving after the procedure.

A few days ago, seemingly out of nowhere, my hips started to really ache.  I had been warned about bone pain in relation to the whole stem cell transplant procedure but I went from zero pain to fairly intense pain in about ten minutes.  It was gone by the next day.  Today, seeing how pleased I was at the results of the blood test, the technician asked if I’d been sore.  I told her of the hips and she said, “That’s what we look for – that is your bone marrow producing these cells.”  I had also passed a night of vague edge of flu-like feelings – also part of the immune system kicking into gear.  It’s actually pretty cool to now know what that feels like.

The room, once I was hooked up, contained three bald guys undergoing stem cell harvest and one hirsute gentleman undergoing what I think is something called photoluminescence therapy.  This procedure pulls blood out of the body, exposes it to UV light and returns it back.  I have no idea why this was being done but it’s a pre-antibiotic era treatment that seems to be undergoing new applications for a wide variety of medical conditions.

The harvesting requires both arms be hooked up.  My left arm had the big steel needle for pulling out the blood supply.  This arm had to remain fairly immobile throughout the five hours spent in the lounger.  There was a bit of pain after about an hour but I got past that soon enough.  The right hand became the return line hook-up as well as the all purpose Kindle grasping, lunch delivery and head scratching implement. 

By the way – I don’t mean to give any commercial endorsement but thank you to the “B’s” who sent me a Kindle.  I have few fears in life but one major one is being stranded somewhere without a book to read.  Now that I’m of a certain age that fear is joined by the fear that I’ll forget my reading glasses and the presence of a book will be a moot point.  That lovely little e-book is always stocked with material and you can adjust the font size (particularly important today as I did, indeed, forget my reading glasses).  I know there are those that swear they could never adopt this technology but I am firmly in the fan column.  I’ll still consume paper versions.  I ordered, after hearing of it from one of the Freiburg docs, the Pulitzer winning The Emperor of All Maladies, A Biography of Cancer by Siddartha Mukherjee.  It’s touted as one of those blends of historical and scientific writings that, when done well, are highly entertaining in a way that feels like it’s more than entertainment.  It’s also way bigger than my Kindle.  Oddly enough, I look forward to reading it but I’m not sure I should right now.

Vitals taken, hook-ups in and the machine began its work.  I had been told that this could take more than one session but I though that I’d be more than satisfied with just the one round.  The time passed fairly quickly by most accounts.  The one account that wouldn’t agree was my lower back due to having to remain in pretty much the same position for the whole five hours.  Lunch included something I know I must have experienced before but of which I have no active memory – someone had to cut up my schweinefleisch (pork cutlet) that was served courtesy of the hospital kitchen.

As various test results came in the news was more and more encouraging.  The best news was that one session would be sufficient to achieve the goal of an adequate harvest.  And it was.  I became strangely prideful when I finished before the two other guys who had started before me.  It’s a guy thing apparently still latent despite the ability of cancer to strip away most of your usual pride.

At the end of the session the result was two bags of product.  One contained pure blood plasma – sort of a clear yellowish fluid.  The other contained approximately eight million stem cells produced by my aching hips and other bone marrow repositories.  These would be mixed together and then frozen – really frozen in some sort of liquefied gas (couldn’t get the proper one across the language barrier) for later “consumption” during the next hospital stay after one, hopefully, LAST chemo (high dose) session.

Speaking of consumption, time to pop lasagna in the oven.  Back in late December we put together and froze three.  We were making one but why go to all that trouble for just one lasagna.  We intended one for the ill-fated mini-break to a self-catering apartment in the Swiss Alps a few days before Christmas.  That was when all of this lymphoma stuff made itself known.  I felt awful, there was little snow and I received the ominous email from my local physician that I needed to see an oncologist ASAP.  Who ever wants to hear that they need to see an oncologist?  We came home a day early and the one of our pre-prepared meals traveled back with us (I don’t think it was the lasagna but I could be wrong).  Anyway, what we’ll eat tonight was prepared when I had stage IV intermediate HRLBC lymphoma.  Well, I don’t know what stage I’m at now – if any – but one thing I do know – I’ll enjoy tonight’s lasagna a whole lot more than that first one.

Thank you for all who pray.  Thank you.