Is there anything better than collecting your stem cells the Monday before Thanksgiving? I mean looking forward to sweet potato casserole is one thing, but seeing your stem cells collect brings a whole another level of excitement. We have been anticipating this day for months, since the first time we discussed the process with my oncologist. After a previous discussion, we knew there would be a chance my body would have issues releasing stem cells, due to previous radiation seven years ago thus we were hopeful for good results.

After 4 days of shots, we arrived at the BMT Apheresis clinic early this morning at 6:30 for lab work to determine if we were able to proceed today. If they were too low, then we would head to the clinic tonight for additional shots and try again tomorrow. I knew this was a possibility, but in an attempt to keep our timeline for chemo, we needed it to be high enough. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know is that my newly placed trifusion line wouldn’t work and the possibility of not being able to move forward today was discussed before even drawing my labs. Luckily, after about 45 minutes, we were finally able to get my line to work and labs drawn… and now we waited for the results.

Sixty minutes later, we received the news… my counts were high enough for collection. Actually, my labs were the highest that the BMT clinic has ever seen! Our goal was for my WBC to be around 50ish and mine were 114. The second value, CD34 was supposed to be at least 0.02, and mine was 0.22. As happy as I was for high numbers, I was even more “happy” that there was a reason that I was experiencing crazy spine and neck pain the past four days as they have seen that pain usually correlates to how high your numbers are.

Now we have a six-hour day ahead of us collecting stem cells. Collection can take anywhere from 1 to 5 days with most individuals requiring 3 full days- just in time to enjoy that Thanksgiving sweet potato casserole.

I will continue to try to provide updates this week. We are currently still trying to figure out the reasoning behind the lymph nodes around my thyroid lighting up on my PET scan. It was determined that I have thyroiditis due to Pembro but the concern is that it would have also been that the lymphoma spread to that location as well. The biopsy that we did a week and a half ago didn’t result, thus I have a CT scan tomorrow evening (after collection) and a visit with the ENT surgeon on Wednesday. Unfortunately, until we can fully rule out lymphoma, I will not be able to start chemo and receive my stem cells back. Chemo is still on the calendar for next Monday, so we are hopeful that we can figure this out quickly.