Today was Stem Cell donation day for Cau Thanh, my mom's brother. We had a fantastic day so I cannot wait to detail it in this post! Some tidbits:
- Stem cell = CD34+ cell
- Stem cell harvesting on the apheresis machine for 360 minutes. This means his blood goes out into a machine, the stem cells are extracted and the blood goes right back into the body.
- About 18L of blood was circulated through the machine. He has 4.5L of blood. That's 4 times through the machine!
- 360 minutes is the longest amount of time donors are allowed to sit to have their stem cells harvested
- He gave himself Neupogen shots 4 days leading up to the donation day to boost his normal level of 8 billion white blood cells per liter to 60 billion white blood cells per liter. He was at 67 billion when we got to the hospital. Over achiever. :)
- They needed 8 million stem cells. My uncle gave 8.74 million! Again, over achiever
- With great foresight, he drank 4 liters of water the previous day so his veins were quite fantastic for the process.
My uncle is quite the man. He is strong mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. He had no side effects from the Neupogen and he barely had any side effects from the 6 hours of stem cell harvesting. One of the side effects that most donors get during the 6 hour process is tingling sensations. This is caused by the lack of calcium. What causes the calcium deficit you ask? The anti-coagulant! While filtering the blood for stem cells, they also drip in an anticoagulant that causes the calcium level in the body to go down, which causes tingling. To combat tingling, they can either slow down the process or give calcium supplements. Slowing down the process creates a risk of not harvesting enough stem cells (which obviously was not the problem with my uncle!) so they try not to slow it down too much. They gave my uncle calcium supplements whenever the felt a tingling sensation. He never takes any supplements so he resisted the calcium at first, but I explained that it was OK and if he didn't take it, he would risk cramping his fingers which would cause an even bigger problem! Eating and drinking sometimes help with the calcium deficit, but since he didn't want to use the bedside potty, he avoided eating too. I don't blame him, I would have done it too!The nurses had so many compliments. Sometimes during the 6 hour process, the patient's blood slows down and the machines start beeping. This never happened with my uncle. He rhythmically squeeze the stress ball for 6 hours and his blood flowed freely. They gave us a list of foods rich in magnesium, calcium, potassium and iron to help aid recovery, but no recovery was needed for him.After we wrapped up at the hospital, we went and made sure he had a nice heme-iron-rich rib-eye steak for celebration. Steaks are not common in Vietnam so it's always a fun treat to have him try new things. Below are several photos from the day.
