Stem Cell Extraction: Day 8
We’re in for a hard couple of days...
Other than not a lot of sleep because of the discomfort from the line, the morning started out ok. We went to Public Health and met RN Lori-Lee. We’ve met a lot of great nurses, but she would definitely be up there with one of the nicest. Must be her Bonavista Bay roots! She gave the Neupogen injections and changed the dressing over the line. It looks all right considering.
While I was driving home Karl said that he was feeling some twinges in his hip and he wondered if it was the bone pain that Neupogen sometimes causes. It was. Within a couple of hours he was crazy in pain down his legs, which fits the pattern we were told to expect. He just took some codeine and has fallen asleep. Hopefully he will sleep until it’s time for more codeine. Before this last set of meds the only way he could get comfortable at all was by walking around. He won’t have a problem getting his 10000 steps today.
I should probably explain the purpose of Neupogen. I’ll use a factory analogy where the physical building is represented by Karl’s bone marrow. When the factory was built , it worked steadily without incident. Its main product was blood, including white blood cells for the immune system, red blood cells, and platelets. The workers themselves in the factory (bone marrow) were blood cells, and they worked on an assembly line producing young blood cells, which are stem cells. The stem cells were manufactured and then they went all over the place in the factory so that they could grow and develop into all the different blood products that Karl needed. Then Myeloma came to work in the factory. No one knows how or when he got in, but once he was there he started converting some of the other workers to his way of doing business. Soon some of the great young blood cell workers started slacking off. They didn’t particularly want to work as hard anymore. Some of them made mistakes when they were producing the young stem cells. The garbage cells they produced started building up in the factory in chains of proteins. Myeloma was estatic about this because he loves free chains of proteins floating around, and it helped him to invite more and more of his buddies to work in the factory. Soon the earnest blood cells that were still trying to work diligently in the factory, despite the evil influence of Myeloma and his clones, were getting crowded out. They couldn’t produce enough blood cells. Karl’s white blood cell count dropped and his immune system was compromised. He got pneumonia. His red blood cells were also low so he didn’t have enough hemoglobin, which is needed to carry oxygen around. The factory was so crowded with all of Myeloma’s buddies and the junk they were making that stuff was forced out of the factory (marrow) and into the parking lot (veins, arteries, capillaries), thickening up Karl’s blood and causing blood clots. If things had continued as they were going, the factory would have had to close.
Then along came the Hemotologists. They saw the state the factory was in and they decided to take some drastic measures to turn around the failing business and help it get back to its main function of producing stem cells which could grow into blood products. Now of course Myeloma wasn’t going to just sit back and let this happen; he had a good gig going on. So the Hemotologists declared war. They brought in their big guns CyBorD and Revlimed and continually bombed the factory until Myeloma was less than half its original strength.
The next step for the Hemotologists was the D Day plan of stem cell transplant. It is a well planned out maneuver. The first type of soldier on the beach was high dose Cyclophosphamide, who stormed the factory and pretty much killed off most of what was left inside. But the Hemotologists knew that even though they couldn’t see Myeloma in the factory any more, he was still in there lerking in the alcoves and closets. So another wave of soldiers is part of the strategy. But first they have to plan how they will get the factory up and running after they get rid of Myeloma. Cyclophosphamide was very effective on Myeloma, but it also killed the earnest blood cells that had continued to try and work in the factory when Myeloma was there. But, no worries, because they have Neupogen back at headquarters and he is ready to join the war.
Neupogen was injected into Karl’s body, and it headed for the factory (bone marrow) where it partnered with the equipment still in the factory to start to produce stem cells. Yay! These stem cells are now happily moving all through the factory and developing into all the different specialized blood cells. But the Hemotologists want to be able to take some of these stem cells out of the factory. They plan to extract them and freeze them. Then when they send in the next wave of soldiers, which is going to be much stronger than Cyclophosphamide and will get rid of pretty much everything in the factory, they will have some young stem cells to transplant in to start production. Karl will be an in-patient in isolation when this happens. So the Hemotologists say keep injecting Neupogen. So more and more is sent in every day and more and more stem cells are produced. But the factory is only so big. It’s getting crowded and the walls are buckling out. Oh the pain! Karl’s bones are crying for it to stop, but the war against Myeloma is still ongoing. The factory doors have now been forced open with the pressure, and the stem cells are surging into Karl’s arteries and veins. That’s a good thing because that’s where the Hemotologists will collect them. Karl’s blood will be filtered using the line that was inserted on Tuesday. But the battle is not over yet. Neupogen will continue to flood into the factory until Monday, and then the Hemotologists are going to send in an investigator to look around. If there are enough stem cells they will start the extraction. If the numbers are still down they have another weapon in the arsenal that will be revealed on Monday night. But for now and for the rest of the weekend the bone marrow will be busy and Karl will feel the Neupogen induced pain. Karl can’t reason throughout the pain right now, but John Mellencamp was correct when he sang, “Hurts so good.”
Other than not a lot of sleep because of the discomfort from the line, the morning started out ok. We went to Public Health and met RN Lori-Lee. We’ve met a lot of great nurses, but she would definitely be up there with one of the nicest. Must be her Bonavista Bay roots! She gave the Neupogen injections and changed the dressing over the line. It looks all right considering.
While I was driving home Karl said that he was feeling some twinges in his hip and he wondered if it was the bone pain that Neupogen sometimes causes. It was. Within a couple of hours he was crazy in pain down his legs, which fits the pattern we were told to expect. He just took some codeine and has fallen asleep. Hopefully he will sleep until it’s time for more codeine. Before this last set of meds the only way he could get comfortable at all was by walking around. He won’t have a problem getting his 10000 steps today.
I should probably explain the purpose of Neupogen. I’ll use a factory analogy where the physical building is represented by Karl’s bone marrow. When the factory was built , it worked steadily without incident. Its main product was blood, including white blood cells for the immune system, red blood cells, and platelets. The workers themselves in the factory (bone marrow) were blood cells, and they worked on an assembly line producing young blood cells, which are stem cells. The stem cells were manufactured and then they went all over the place in the factory so that they could grow and develop into all the different blood products that Karl needed. Then Myeloma came to work in the factory. No one knows how or when he got in, but once he was there he started converting some of the other workers to his way of doing business. Soon some of the great young blood cell workers started slacking off. They didn’t particularly want to work as hard anymore. Some of them made mistakes when they were producing the young stem cells. The garbage cells they produced started building up in the factory in chains of proteins. Myeloma was estatic about this because he loves free chains of proteins floating around, and it helped him to invite more and more of his buddies to work in the factory. Soon the earnest blood cells that were still trying to work diligently in the factory, despite the evil influence of Myeloma and his clones, were getting crowded out. They couldn’t produce enough blood cells. Karl’s white blood cell count dropped and his immune system was compromised. He got pneumonia. His red blood cells were also low so he didn’t have enough hemoglobin, which is needed to carry oxygen around. The factory was so crowded with all of Myeloma’s buddies and the junk they were making that stuff was forced out of the factory (marrow) and into the parking lot (veins, arteries, capillaries), thickening up Karl’s blood and causing blood clots. If things had continued as they were going, the factory would have had to close.
Then along came the Hemotologists. They saw the state the factory was in and they decided to take some drastic measures to turn around the failing business and help it get back to its main function of producing stem cells which could grow into blood products. Now of course Myeloma wasn’t going to just sit back and let this happen; he had a good gig going on. So the Hemotologists declared war. They brought in their big guns CyBorD and Revlimed and continually bombed the factory until Myeloma was less than half its original strength.
The next step for the Hemotologists was the D Day plan of stem cell transplant. It is a well planned out maneuver. The first type of soldier on the beach was high dose Cyclophosphamide, who stormed the factory and pretty much killed off most of what was left inside. But the Hemotologists knew that even though they couldn’t see Myeloma in the factory any more, he was still in there lerking in the alcoves and closets. So another wave of soldiers is part of the strategy. But first they have to plan how they will get the factory up and running after they get rid of Myeloma. Cyclophosphamide was very effective on Myeloma, but it also killed the earnest blood cells that had continued to try and work in the factory when Myeloma was there. But, no worries, because they have Neupogen back at headquarters and he is ready to join the war.
Neupogen was injected into Karl’s body, and it headed for the factory (bone marrow) where it partnered with the equipment still in the factory to start to produce stem cells. Yay! These stem cells are now happily moving all through the factory and developing into all the different specialized blood cells. But the Hemotologists want to be able to take some of these stem cells out of the factory. They plan to extract them and freeze them. Then when they send in the next wave of soldiers, which is going to be much stronger than Cyclophosphamide and will get rid of pretty much everything in the factory, they will have some young stem cells to transplant in to start production. Karl will be an in-patient in isolation when this happens. So the Hemotologists say keep injecting Neupogen. So more and more is sent in every day and more and more stem cells are produced. But the factory is only so big. It’s getting crowded and the walls are buckling out. Oh the pain! Karl’s bones are crying for it to stop, but the war against Myeloma is still ongoing. The factory doors have now been forced open with the pressure, and the stem cells are surging into Karl’s arteries and veins. That’s a good thing because that’s where the Hemotologists will collect them. Karl’s blood will be filtered using the line that was inserted on Tuesday. But the battle is not over yet. Neupogen will continue to flood into the factory until Monday, and then the Hemotologists are going to send in an investigator to look around. If there are enough stem cells they will start the extraction. If the numbers are still down they have another weapon in the arsenal that will be revealed on Monday night. But for now and for the rest of the weekend the bone marrow will be busy and Karl will feel the Neupogen induced pain. Karl can’t reason throughout the pain right now, but John Mellencamp was correct when he sang, “Hurts so good.”
It was rough yesterday.......God Aweful Pain. No matter what you do to try to alleviate it, it doesn’t work Can’t sit, can’t stand, can’t t lie down, can’t walk, can’t sleep., and the happy pills the hospital prescribed fo me don’t work either.
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