Beth Morgan Multiple Myeloma Treatment Blog
My life as a myeloma patient for almost two decades
This is day 0, the day on which I’ll receive some of my stem cells. I’ll get more tomorrow, too.
They’re getting ready to do it soon, it appears.
Something I had (maybe chemo?) gave me terrible indigestion last night and this morning. I also had a bad headache. I didn’t sleep very well, so I hope to catch a nap while I’m here.
This is a picture of one of the syringes filled with my stem cells. I had such an unpleasant experience with the re-infusion that I hate to even look at this!
We got the apartment and are settled in, sort of. Everything’s not put away yet, but soon will be. We were thinking out loud about how great a place this would be to live, IF we were 25 years old. Nothing’s better than home. This is a 2 BR/2BA apartment with a kitchen, living room, dining room and washer & dryer. I think this is going to be much better than doing the SCT inpatient.
This is all the stuff that was either being pumped into or out of my Hickman catheter. The bag of yellow stuff is platelets. The red bag contains my stem cells. There was also calcium, saline and other fluids. Normally, I’d have studied the label on every bag, but I don’t know why I didn’t do it this time.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EonIzTZug98]
I’m not going to lie. the Neupogen shots can cause bone pain. It’s not pleasant. I have percocet to take, and have had a few today. This bone pain isn’t like anything I’ve felt before, except when I had those 10 days of Neupogen shots before. It’s the result of the crowding of the bone marrow. One nurse told me that this is the kind of pain experienced by some leukiemia patients when their white cells are proliferating out of control.
The apheresis process causes a reduction in platelets, so I’m going to get some before I’m sent home for the day. I’ve never had any blood products before. I just received 2 Tyelnol caplets and one Benedryl caplet. The platelets will be here in about 10 minutes. I’ll take a picture so you can see what they look like.
This will be my last day of apheresis. We’ll end up with just enough stem cells for one transplant, instead of two, which is what we were shooting for. I will have spent 18 hours in the chair and some more hours waiting for lab results.
One thing I noticed yesterday was that the check in procedure is slow. That’s not so bad for people like me, but what about the people who are trying to recover from transplants? Making them wait any amount of time seems inhumane.
This stem cell collection process really makes me tired! I could nap right now.
We shot some video of dressing changes to help me remember all the steps. I can put them on the web if anyone’s interested in seeing them.
Yesterday was my birthday, so I came home to a clean house, and had cake & everything! My sister even brought dinner, part of which I ate. It was good!
More soon.