Stem cell collection

Nurse Julia

Ouch!

Stem cell collection

On Friday night, Nate began his nightly shots to boost his stem cell production.  Julia is our child who is not grossed out by medical stuff so she cleaned Nate's arm and took pictures for us.  This picture makes us laugh.  Nate was not really in pain, he was making the face of "crud, my wife is giving me shots." A nurse I am not.

We left for Chicago after supper on Monday.  The kids were upset about us leaving for an unknown period of time and therefore I cried after we left.  Everything is becoming real- this is the big event.  Early Tuesday morning he began the collection process.  First they inserted a catheter into his neck, not painful but not pleasant.  His blood draw showed that there were about 9 million stem cells in his blood stream.  The doctor wanted 10 million collected, so we began praying that Nate could get the collection done in one day. (They had told us the collection could take 1-5 days.)  We then sat for about 6 hours while the stem cells were collected.  The collection finished at 4:30 pm and then we waited for 1.5 hours for the lab results to show if enough cells were collected.  And boom! They had 10 million stem cells!  Nate is a stud. And the best news was they took the catheter out right then. Originally we were told the catheter would be removed the following morning.  Nate would have been very uncomfortable sleeping with those tubes dangling from his neck. We then packed up our stuff and headed home- much earlier than anticipated.

We have one last appointment with the Northwestern Doctor on the 27th.  Nate checks into the hospital on April 7 for the transplant.  In the meantime the doctors told Nate to stay healthy (or the transplant will be rescheduled) and enjoy life.

-Please pray that Nate stays healthy!
-We plan on doing a family trip to Boyne Mountain over part of spring break. We hope to get in quality family time before the chaos of April begins.  Please pray for a relaxing and fun time together.