Transplant Complete!

Tony's transplant began at 10:30 this morning. The lab got the stem cells last night and removed the plasma and most of the red blood cells. (They are unneeded) They tested the cells this morning and found that they had 98% viability. She said that's the highest they've seen in an unrelated donor, so we were pretty excited. They were especially amazed by that because it had been 48 hours since they had extracted them from the donor. (The donor was poked 50 to 100 times in the back (hip bones) to extract the amount of bone marrow that was needed). 

The original amount they started with (the bone marrow) was over 1300 ccs. After they removed most everything else (besides the stem cells) it ended up being 812 ccs, which filled exactly 14 of these syringes. There are 3.07 million stem cells in total that Tony received today. We were told that the engraftment will happen faster with more cells, so we are glad our donor was able to give so much!

This is what the blood came in. All 14 syringes were in this cooler. It is better to keep them cool.

This wonderful lady is Donna. This is who has been doing soooo much for us. She was responsible for finding our donor, getting us a grant to pay for the process of finding a donor, and a million other things. She was the one that did the procedure today. We listened to Mannheim Steamroller Christmas while she pumped each syringe into his port. After each syringe she had to flush the line with saline solution because the stem cells are thicker so they can cause the line to clog if its not flushed. 

Half way there! They were consistently monitoring his life signs all the way through. He stayed really steady and did really well. 

Tony took an ice cream break in the middle. 

We started syringe #9 at exactly 12:12 on 12/12/12. 

Last one!

Mission complete. 1:00 exactly. Tony felt a little nauseous after he was all done, so he is going to rest. We will not know if the engraftment worked for 14-25 days. It will be at that point that we also find out whether or not he has graft vs. host disease. That is where the new stem cells (which make up his new immune system) decide whether or not to protect or attack his body. They can identify his body as foreign and attack it. If that happens, they will suppress the new immune system even more until it gets used to its new home. He has 3 or 4 more doses of a milder chemo that will be given every few days to suppress the new cells. We are hoping that his counts begin coming back up around Christmas.