Here We Sit

Everything went fine yesterday with the tests and appointments, but as usual, no bed available.  Hopefully they will discharge someone today and let me in!  Aside from that, everything is going fine.

This stem cell harvesting process is quite a bit more involved than we had anticipated, and this may put us here a good bit longer than we planned.  I will have a central line put in (sort of like the PICC in my arm, but in my collar bone region) sometime during this round of chemo.  This is a "surgical" procedure, which I'm not looking forward to, but my mom tells me it's not much worse than having the PICC put into my arm.  The central line is bigger than the PICC and prevents damaging the stem cells when they are taken out.  Once I'm discharged from the hospital after chemo, we will come home for a couple of days to pack, then head back to Houston.  I will get TWO Neupogen shots a day to stimulate the stem cells, and get specialized lab work everyday (which cannot be done in BR) to see how many stem cells I'm making.  Once they get to a level where they can be harvested, I will be hooked up to an apheresis machine for a few hours to have them taken out of my blood.  This may need to be done for two or three days in a row to collect enough stem cells.

This  means I will basically be sitting in a hotel room for about a week after chemo getting labs checked every day until the stem cell harvesting starts.  The stem cell harvesting itself should only take a couple of days.  At least we're right here at the end.  I'm really not liking the idea of being here so long and coming home (hopefully) just days before Thanksgiving, but at least I'm almost done and should still be able to enjoy Thanksgiving.  After all, we do have SO MUCH for which to be thankful :)  I should still get to eat, but I probably won't have time to cook like I had hoped.

Josh's Comic Relief Corner:
Yesterday at the doctor's office, we overheard a woman saying she was going to see a "germinologist."  If anyone knows what this is or would like to leave a comment defining it for us, we would much appreciate it :)  Not sure if it's germ or German or what...but she mentioned the need to be cleansed.