My appointment with "Dracula" was this morning at 7:30 for a blood specimen. This will be done each day before the harvesting takes place. Then down the hall to the Pheresis Clinic for the first day of harvesting. The entire procedure took about 4 hours with 3 hours being the time taken for the actual harvesting.

My catheter has one insertion area but has two lines and then others can piggyback onto them. During the harvesting, one line receives my blood and it goes through a machine that separates out the stem cells then returns the blood to me, with calcium added. The calcium is administered through one of those piggyback lines. When the blood and calcium comes back to me, it is much cooler than the blood going out so there is a feeling of chill during the harvesting. They supply warmed blankets that help take much of the chill off during the harvesting.

My nurse, Gladys, told me to let her know if I had any unusual sensations. The only one I had was about one hour into the harvesting, I felt my lips tingling and becoming numb. I told her and she increased the amount of calcium I was receiving and within a few minutes, the sensation when away.

She showed me the collection bag and it looked like there was about ¾ to one cup of blood and she said those were my white blood cells and my stem cells. She sent a small sample to the lab and they can tell from that approximately how many stem cells they collected. They need to collect several million before the transplant can continue. Hopefully, I can produce enough stem cells that the collection will only take another day or two.

Arthur went back to his second class on catheter care and will take a test tomorrow on flushing and heparin cap changing. I will go back with him next week for him to demonstrate that he can also change the dressing. He is a great caregiver.

The four shots a day of Neupogen continues and we are back in the apartment. We are trying to find a good seafood restaurant close by our apartment for dinner this evening.