The scheduled activity for this week is Peter’s stem cell harvest here in Minneapolis. I’ve been vague on what the heck this is, but Erika gave me a good overview after her work up meeting earlier this week. They withdraw Peter’s blood, separate/isolate the cells, and save the stem cells, and merge the blood back into him. The stem cells are immediately frozen and then shipped to Los Angeles. I suppose there’s more work on the harvested cells in LA. The cells remain frozen in LA until they are needed for the marrow transplant. Mind boggling.
They will not be using Peter’s hickman line to withdraw the blood. His lines are too flimsy and will collapse while taking the amount of blood necessary for this procedure. So they will need to insert a new line in his neck (jugular).
The exact day of this procedure is unknown right now. Peter has to ramp up for this by taking increased doses of a growth factor — a drug that he takes everyday. However, before they can increase the doses, his blood counts have to be at a certain level. Peter’s counts since round 2 were dropping and bottomed out yesterday. They have rebounded somewhat today, but not to the level where they can increase the growth factor. So when the counts are high enough, he will go on the higher dose for three days before they can do the harvest.
Furthermore, shipping the frozen cells to Los Angeles is time sensitive, so they need to arrive at a time when it’s ideal for the staff to receive them — not a weekend night. So I’ll try to keep you posted on the exact schedule.
Reports from the Eigner house are positive. Peter is more than stable. He’s playing like normal. He’s currently taking on his mom in hockey in the basement and you can guess who’s winning. He has developed a couple sores in his mouth from the chemo and that makes eating more of a challenge. Two or three times a day he willingly takes the “swishy medicine” to prevent these, but a couple still broke through.
So let’s hope for the counts to keep rising so our little buddy can move onto this next phase in the treatment.
Thanks Uncle Matt for the update. I have known people who have had harvests done – but I think there must be numberous procedures.
Peter, hope you can eat really good to help keep yourself big and strong for all this new stuff. I’m sorry to hear you got a couple of sores even though you do the swishy liquid in your mouth. I bet ice cream is easy to eat!! Jenni’s computer is down AGAIN, so I just called her to update her on your story. She told me to tell you all “hello”, and to tell you she is praying every day for you to get better real fast.
Ty and Erika, we wish you all the strength in the world as you go through yet another step in this story. You are in our thoughts and prayers.
Peg and Ron