Day Zero 'Stem Cells Go In'

This morning Gilbert brought Kevin's stem cells to him with a nifty machine to 'warm' the frozen cells.

We learned from Gilbert that in the 1 day that they harvested Kevin's cells they got enough for not 3 but 4 transplants! Each bag has around 5100 cells.

Then the nurse practitioner, Sam, put them back into him through his port over about 45 minutes.

 

The bag with the pink in it is the cells mixed with a substance that preserves them.

Today is day ZERO then they start counting up. So the nurses refer to day ZERO as his 2nd Birthday. The 1st day of the rest of his life! He's going to have a lot of Birthday's by the end of the 2nd transplant :-)

He has tolerated the cells well but the chemo is still making him feel pretty lousy. The next 10 to 15 days are critical. His numbers will drop to pretty much nothing then and around day 10 the stem cells kick in and start working.  It will be a rough time but he should feel better soon and get some immunity back before they are ready to do this all again.

Hillary