Collection Day is Here!

It started early at 7 am again this morning, but this time we didn't need to wait for all the test results.  The shot he received last night assured us that he would be ready for collection today.  So the lab tech, Brad, met with us, went over the procedure and got things hooked up and ready to go.

So what is a stem cell anyway and why are we collecting them?

Basically a stem cell is a baby blood cell that hasn't decided what it wants to be when it grows up.  It's undifferentiated so it's able to multiply and divide and develop into all the different parts of the blood; white cells, plasma, red cells and more stem cells.  The cells that are collected and frozen over the next few days will be returned to Jay after his bone marrow is killed by the mega dose of chemotherapy.  The harvested cells will regenerate and create new bone marrow and ultimately a whole new blood supply.  Pretty amazing stuff!

The process is fairly simple (says the person who is not hooked up to the a machine).  A tube is hooked to the central line that draws out the blood.  The blood is circulated through a machine that spins out the stem cells.  The blood and plasma is returned to Jay in another line.  He spent about 3 1/2 hours hooked to the machine while it did it's job.  The rest of the day was waiting around for test results to make sure his current blood stream is back in balance.

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How many stem cells are we hoping to collect today?

It takes about 2 million stem cells for a successful transplant.  Our doctor is planning to collect 10-15 million to allow for several transplants down the road.  After the first transplant it is really difficult to collect additional stem cells so now is the time.   After his blood work was evaluated and the collection process started the lab projected that it would take about 3 1/2 hours and we would collect about 1 million cells today.  Although the tech thinks it will be more. So we will be back to do it all again tomorrow.


There they are, the red bag is the baby stem cells that were collected today.  The other bag is plasma.

Jay says he thinks having baby stem cells is harder that having a human baby.  Hmmmm, what do you moms think?  Remember being 9 1/2 months pregnant and thinking you are in hard labor only to be sent home by the hospital.  Ok I guess he probably understands that one from yesterday.  Ladies, we might just have to let him win on that argument today, after all he is having about 10 million and we only have 1 or 2 babies at a time.

So what do we name all these baby stem cells?

We've had the name Orville suggested so only 9,999,999 names to go.  Can you come up with a crazy stem cell name to help us out?

Step by step we'll get there.

Jay & Lynn