Hi to everyone. We arrived at the University of Michigan on the Thursday morning, October 2nd. This visit is to prepare for her Autologous Peripheral Stem Cell Transplant (PBSC) Transplant. Paige went to the operating room early Thursday where they placed a catheter in a large vein in her groin for the stem cell collection. She returned to her room where she underwent apheresis for about 4 hours to collect (harvest) the stem cells from her bloodstream. She was still feeling the effects of the anesthesia, so she slept through the entire process. On the days prior to the procedure she was injected with a drug (Neupogen or GCSF) that moves stem cells out of the bone marrow into the bloodstream where they can be collected with an apherisis machine. Depending of the number of stems cells collected during each session, we were told it may take one to five days to harvest enough stem cells for tranplantation.
After the about 4 hours they were able to harvest only a very small amount of stem cells. This was probably due to the drop in her WBC from her last course of chemotherapy. They want her WBCs above 5,000 and Paige's are 1,800. Also, her platelets had dropped to 22,000, which was evident from bleeding at the new catheter site.
To make the story of our last few days short, Paige has received bood and platelet transfusions and extra doses of the GCSF to prepare her for another apheresis session.
As of this morning her white blood cells (WBCs) are 1,300 (need them at 5,000), platelets (PLTs) are 83,000 (need to stay above 55,000), and hemoglobin 9.1 (needs to stay above 8) in order to have the apheresis done. They will continue to check her blood levels daily until they are able to complete the collection. In the mean time, we're running around like crazy trying to keep Paige somewhat subdued in order to protect the line in her groin. Not an easy thing to do!
We'll probably update tomorrow. Thanks for checking in.
Love,
Andy, Sandi & Paige
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