Harvest Festival

The weekend has gone by and we both needed it. We seem to have both come down with some sort of tummy bug with me a day or two ahead of Helen and us both reacting out of different ends. It was cyclic for both of us where each of us would feel better then, usually after a bit to eat, relapse and go through it all again. On the plus side we’re both now on the mend and hopefully keep heading in that direction. My badly aching muscles mentioned in the last blog have now all recovered. Apart from the bug leftovers I’m feeling pretty good.

Sarah returned on Sunday. It was really good to see her again. We all had hugs. Despite her long flights from the Uk she did pretty well lasting the day. We even managed to watch the Korean Grand Prix together.

The big event was my stem cell harvesting which took place yesterday at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne.

Our appointment was for 8am so we left before 7am anticipating a lot of traffic. Wandering around the hospital at 7:15am we realized we had plenty of time in hand so we headed for the cafeteria where I had a coffee and delicious muffin. Helen only had a few nibbles as she was yet to feel good.

Shortly before 8am we headed up to the Haematology/Oncology ward and checked in.

My first activity involved yet another blood test. While it’s routine for me now it’s not so routine for my veins which have yet to begin returning to their full potential. A suitable vein was found on the back of my hand which was mildly unpleasant. The primary purpose of the test was to check the amount of stem cells in my blood. Post chemo my count would have been 0.1 (don’t know the units, sorry) or 0.01. Normally it would be around 9. I had to beat 20. Hopefully my body would have responded sufficiently to the injections I’d been giving myself.

We were not only keen to start the collection on Monday but also to finish. To finish we would have to pass the test then collect 2 million stem cells. We had our fingers crossed.

The testing would take about 90 mins so Helen headed off into town to revisit the passport office to drop off our notarized documents. She also visited the FedEx office to get ahead of sending the docs to the US when our docs have been apostilled.

While she was out my results came in. I came in at 45, much more than the 20 pass mark.

I was soon put into a room where my nurse Carey gave me a hot water trough for me to dunk my arms into. It was balanced precariously my leg while I sat sideways on the bed uncomfortably leaning over into it. It was only meant for 2 minutes so that was fine. About 15 minutes later Helen showed up. By now I was very uncomfortable and both the bed and my tee shirt were wet. Fortunately I was soon rescued by another nurse. Carey had been tied up with her previous patient.

Soon I was in the next room where I would remain for the day. Carey had a go putting a big, fat needle into my right arm near my elbow. The vein popped out of the way of the needle so she fetched another nurse who managed to get the needle in without any further fuss. This needle was the one through which my blood would be collected.

My left arm was soon approached to have my return line put in. Although this needle was smaller, my left arm also put in some resistance. So out came another tub of hot water, this time slightly hotter than tolerable. By the time my arm came out, it looked like a poached lobster. The good side is that the next needle went straight in.

Suddenly I was surrounded by three nurses dancing a maypole dance with bags and tubes. Within a few minutes it was all quiet and we were left with the delightful Carey (a Scottish lass with great accent) and the machine.

What I didn’t realize beforehand is that the machine was going to collect some blood plasma as well as my stem cells. It did this by a continuous process of pumping my blood through a centrifuge. The machine had to seek out the correct level within the blood column inside the centrifuge to extract these fluids and this took time. Before the level was found, the extracted fluids that weren’t quite stems cells and plasma were returned to me via two more tubes. When the level was found the machine would slow down and route these two fluids into their separate bags. This would go on for a few minutes before the machine would then spin up like a washing machine and go back to seeking levels. More tubes were involved in doing things like adding anticoagulants, taking out air and perhaps other things.

It took a while for things to settle down. Alarms would go off and lights would flash. I would feel a buzzing sometimes in my arm. I would have to pump away with my fist to keep blood flowing while Carey adjusted settings on the machine and applied hot compresses to me. Soon all settled down and we sailed through the planned 4 hour harvest.

Throughout this exercise, Carey was terrific. She had a wonderful sense of humour and was willing to answer any question and explain what was going on.

We had a nice surprise when Doctor Pascal swung by. The Alfred is a sister hospital to Monash and Pascal had been our registrar from when the hematologists took over just before the beginning of my chemo. The doctors move between the hospitals so we lost him half way through. We always liked him so it was good to have another chat.

Carey knew we were on a timetable and that we had hoped to collect all the required stem cells in one day. The target was 2 million cells. Due to the late settling down, if we ran for the full four hours we would finish too late for the folks whose job it was to count the cells to finish that day. So she made the decision to cut the session a little short even though it would mean we would collect fewer cells. She was pretty confident we’d collect enough but obviously couldn’t be certain. But it gave us a chance to move on. When time was up, the machine was stopped and the tubes all clipped using a heated snipper. Carey then showed us the inside of the machine and the disposable parts.

After all this, the only side effect I felt was a sore right elbow which I’d had to keep straight throughout. It didn’t take too long to recover so we were soon out of hospital and back to Sarah and Russ’s home.

We had to wait with bated breath for the results from the counters. About 2 hours later the phone call came as did the results. I was told the harvesting was excellent and that they’d managed to collect 5.8 million cells. I asked them if anyone else needed any but of course they can only be used for me. Sorted.