Harvesting Completed!

Sandi has been given the word that harvesting is over. They have enough at this point and what they have seems to be in good shape. The plan is that the next four days they will have her come in and have her port lines flushed every day. This is to make sure they clean out all that has been done up to this point and keep everything wide open.

Next Tuesday morning she will be admitted to the hsopital so they can put her modified stem cells back into her. What that exact schedule will be we don't know yet. All we know is they will finish off her immune system and have her in quarantine for at least three weeks as this is done.

Sandi Update

I have talked to her very briefly and she feels very sick tonight. They did a five hour harvest procedure today where they attached some sort of pump machine to the new three line deal in her chest and cycled her blood through it.

This new three line deal is hurting her a lot and she has weeks more of this thing in her chest. Unfortunately, this new one was put right where the previous port she had a year ago that caused her so much pain was located. If you look closely, you can see some of the scar tissue where the old one was a year ago.


They attach this pump machine,  which she says looks a lot like some sort of dialysis machine, to these three lines and run the blood and saline fluid through it and her. Somehow this pulls out the stem cells. This also works totally different than what I had understood would be done here when the time came. This was how she spent her morning today from around six to almost noon when it was all said and done. Then they had her come back late this afternoon for another injection.

The plan is for them to do this again tomorrow and hopefully that will be enough stem cells. She would have another injection of some type tomorrow afternoon. If they don't have enough to work with at that point she would have to do this again on Thursday.Obviously she does not want that.


After that I am not sure what her schedule will be the next couple of days as she doesn't really know either. It keeps changing based on what her body is doing at a given point. Theoretically she is still on schedule to be admitted Monday morning for the three week quarantine period and receiving her modified stem cells.

Right now she does not care about all that. She just wants to avoid throwing up tonight.

Update

Well, we still don't have Medicaid or Social Security Disability for Sandi, "Lite Up Texas" has lost our application for reduced power and phone bills for the fifth time so we have to apply yet again, and we got over 10k in medical bills delivered here today. Both GREAT LAKES STUDENT LOANS and NELNET have failed to process her forbearance paperwork and continue to harass us multiple times a day with robo calls about payments and worthless form letters. This after SALLIE MAE turned us over to a collection agency earlier this month despite the fact we were supposedly on a forbearance deal and had not heard from them in  months. Not to mention our crummy money situation with rent due this week which we do not have. 

I have talked briefly to Sandi today and I don't know much. I don't think they actually started harvesting stem cells today. The procedure seems to have changed from what I had understood it to be for harvesting. I do know she had the PICC line deal implanted into her chest so now she has another port type deal in there with three lines into it. I also know she was hurting pretty good after this one was done and had a new pain pill prescription to help her.

So, I don't know much. What I do know isn't good. Damn right depressing and I am very fedup on so many levels. It didn't help that I have fallen twice this evening. Do not panic--nothing broke. Just bruised up a bit----again.

Tomorrow we do all this again.....

Thursday Evening---Sandi

Spent most of the afternoon at the hospital with Sandi. Once I got by the sign on her door which I had not seen on any other door until today.

 
While the bone marrow test results are not back yet, they do have the results of the PET SCAN. The news was not good as the cancer has spread further and appears to be growing in overall size. This was not a surprise as we had all kind of expected more growth based on what has been happening in recent weeks.

  
Despite the fact her blood sugar was so high today,  as it was yesterday, they have kept on with chemo. Today was the planned three drug day with all of them running at the same time by IV drip in through her port and PICC Line. At this point tonight only one continues as it won't finish until late tomorrow morning. That particular drug runs for 24 hours.

 
While this is all running into her they are also running saline and potassium into her and giving her a lot of insulin along with a couple of other things that are supposed to help with the blood sugar problem.

The current plan is for her to get yet another drug early tomorrow and then be released very late in the day. She then will have to return on two separate occasions at some point in the next couple of days for shots to finish this first round of chemo. What that schedule is and what the schedule will be regarding round two we don't know yet.


 Kevin