Justine keeps telling me I need to blog so here I am. Many have had questions about the process. It is simple, I was hooked up to a machine (basically a large centrifuge) where they took blood out of me, it would go in the machine, the stem cells are filtered out, then the blood is immediately returned to my body. During the process I feel really no different from normal. It took me one day to collect the necessary amount for both transplants. I then proceeded with three days of high dosage chemotherapy to which I felt pretty good during that process. It was exactly the same as my Chemo process before. After about two days of letting the Chemo get out of my system it was time to put the stem cells back in. They put about 5 bags of cells and some other substance back in my body over about 1 hr time. Midway through the transplant I began vomitting which is pretty normal for the process. For the next 5 or so days the stem cells are just hanging out in your blood stream and then they make their way back to the bone marrow and start growing again. Normal Chemotherapy would take my white blood counts basically to 0, but it would only be a day or two. This time it was closer to a week. It took me 12 days to recover to acceptable levels to be released. They tell me that is the fastest anyone has ever been, so let's hope that is a good sign for things to come. Average expectancy is about 20 days from transplant.
Many of you know that my brother got married on August 10th and I was still in the hospital. That morning the nurse found out about it and asked permission from the doctors for me to go to the temple ceremony. I found out about 1 hour before the ceremony that I would be able to go. This is after being told all week that I would have no shot at participating in the wedding day festivities. So there are little miracles happening all the time if we choose to acknowledge them. It was a great day for my family and even a confidence booster for me.
As for being in the hospital, it can be long, but sleep seems to be the best way to pass the time. I would go for walks about twice a day with a goal of half an hour each time. I don't know if it is a good quality, but I find myself easily entertained; so although it would seem very boring to be stuck in the same room for about 15 days, I never really found myself getting bored. I played some video games but probably not as much as I thought I would. I read some books and did puzzles etc. I will say that looking at myself now compared to a year ago, I certainly respect and cherish the little things in life a lot more. I have good friends and family that have been very supportive in this whole process. Justine has been a great source of strength for me and always has an outpouring of love for me. Its been good to spend so much time with Tayvia and Justine throughout this whole cancer process. There are so many enjoyable experiences that I have had recently that I just don't know that I would have appreciated a few years ago. Anyhow, that's about enough from me, enjoy some of the pictures below.
Also, many of you have asked what you can do to help us and to be honest there aren't lot of things we are in need of... So I have just started telling people that we are always accepting cookies, brownies, homemade bread, peach desserts, smoothies or other things like that. We certainly still love our sugar in this house.
Great post Eric! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
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