Day 132

Back pain is back this morning, right at the point where the left femur attaches to the hip. On a scale of 1 to 10 it's a 7 to an 8. I'm going to ask them to take a close look at the X-rays this morning or do an MRI to see what's going on. I'm out of pain pills so I'll wait till I see them later. We'll get numbers on yesterday's harvest this afternoon. I think it was probably pretty good. They did a series of checks yesterday because I'm retaining fluid, my weight went from 179 to 187 over the last couple of days and the staff is concerned. Other than that, everything is ok.
We got the astonishing numbers this afternoon. They harvested in excess of 10,000,000 million cells and I have over 14,000,000 million cells in the bank. My white blood cells are at 42CC and we decided to do another day of harvesting. Maybe they can use the additional cells for research. When they do the transplant (rescue) they reinfuse around 4,000,000 million cells. The rest are frozen and stored for more transplants down the road.
They said that the additional weight will go away over the next several days and that the acute back pain was due to the robust infusion of Neupogen and that it to, will pass. A normal level of white blood cells is 3 to 4CC, not 42CC. Anyway it looks like the next step will begin on December 14th with a one hour infusion of Melphalan followed by the transplant on the 15th and then isolation between the hospital and an apartment three blocks from the hospital over the next 12 days. They want me close by in case I need transfusions, etc. If all goes well I'll be on my way home on the 26th of December. Isn't the 26th Kathy Polizzi's birthday? Keep the prayers rolling in, they help.