Thursday, June 18th
Treatment Objective:
I’m back in Baltimore to harvest my stem cells. I have to hook up to a machine that takes my blood and filters out all of the white cells, then puts the blood back into my body through the other arm. Probably sounds confusing. They are taking my white blood cells to use as food for my stem cells, which they will extract later in the week.
I’m giving myself 2 injections per day to amp up my stem cells, unfortunately it makes me feel like I have the flu. After putting in a port at the end of the week, they will take the stem cells from my bone marrow and harvest them until my later treatment with chemo. They feed the stem cells the white cells they extracted earlier in the week to keep them alive. Crazy stuff!
Overall:
I’m still extremely sore from the previous surgery! Even though this treatment isn’t as bad as the surgery, it still isn’t fun. I can’t believe that I’ve been through so much already and haven’t actually “treated” the cancer. I’m realizing more and more how lucky I am to be here and can’t wait to kick some cancer ass soon.
I know some of my treament descriptions sounds confusing, please e-mail or comment any questions on the livelifeloud website. I’m happy to answer or clarify them!
FYI:
I met with my radiology onclogist and found out some interesting stuff I had never heard before. Because the patients they treat with radiation aren’t typically as young as me, they made it very clear that a common side effect of radiation is sterility. Weird huh? I have to meet with someone to discuss the whole “freezing process” if I want to have kids down the line.
This may be too much information, but I want to share everything I’m faced with, and this was a complete surprise. If I go through with it, which I probably will, I’ll let you know how the resources were. I can’t help but think about the movie “Roadtrip” in this situation. :)
I’m allowed to make these jokes, I have cancer.
