The Collection

I spent the last five days in the hospital. During this time, I was receiving a continuous flow of IV antibiotics in an attempt to nip whatever was lurking in the bud to stay on track with an MGH/stem cell transplant. This didn’t go as planned when the fever spiked, and I missed the stem cell collection scheduled for Wednesday.

That afternoon (on Wednesday), while still hospitalized in Maine, the oncologist whose care I’m currently in at MGH called me. At this point, it seemed apparent that my fever was a result of neutropenia as well as from the filgrastim injections ( http://www.neupogenhcp.com/).

The blood drawn for cultures hadn’t, after 48 hours, indicated a blood-borne infection. The oncologist at MGH was convincing & practically demanded that I get discharged, drive down to Boston that afternoon/evening, and make the 07:00 Stem cell collection already on the books for the following day (Thursday, June 8). to me, this sounded reckless. I didn’t want to be in the hospital longer than needed, but I also was fearful of the big, germ-filled world waiting to sneeze on me and send me back to the ER. I feared that, should this happen, should my fever spike force me to the hospital for another 5 days or more, this would further delay the actual transplant. (something that has been postponed already due to cancer-related issues!) his fear was a different side of postponement & delay – that the small window of opportunity after the nadir (which refers to the lowest point that an individual’s blood cell count

will reach as a side effect of chemotherapy) & the peak reached as a result of the injections, would close on us. He was worried that if I didn’t make it Thursday to collect and thus left only Friday, we were taking a massive gamble as most people need at least two days to collect all the stem cells they will need for a transplant. If I were to wait until Friday and NOT gather all the cells, we’d have to finish on Monday and hope the injections were still assisting in generating the needed stem cells. It’s not only the shots that assist in this generation of cells! The whole reason for undergoing the monstrous round of chemo/etoposide was to send the body (after nadir) into white blood cell count overdrive! Add daily shots to the mix to assist this, and boom – massive (daily, maybe hourly?) jumps in cell counts.

So what did I do? I got discharged (June 7) and made the trip to Boston.

Today, June 8 (2017), at 07:00, I walked over to Mass General Hospital for collection. The process took several hours. My triple lumen pheresis catheter (seen in photos, the line coming out of my chest) worked perfectly!

When I was finally free, I took a much-needed stroll around the area to get fresh air and sunlight. I was awaiting a call from the nurse practitioner to tell me whether or not the collection was successful or if I needed to return the next day to finish up.

The plan worked, and, though one day off schedule, they gathered all the cells needed in one session.