Life's Journey with Multiple Myeloma

Today we were at Dr Reddy’s office for the stem cell collection.  We arrived at 7:30am and Alpesh was hooked up to the stem cell collection machine at around 10:45am.  The blood counts were excellent – he was apparently at his peak in terms of stem cell production so this was the ideal day to collect.  The Neupogen mobilizes the stem cells and also increases white blood counts.  Last Thursday Alpesh’s WBC was down to 0.2 and he was told to take precautions by wearing a mask and avoiding all fresh fruits and vegetables.  Today Alpesh’s WBC was 50!  The Neupogen did its job.  Dr Reddy’s staff was awed by his CD34 numbers which were 256.  The CD34 is the concentration of stem cells and the higher the number the quicker the collection time.  Since the 256 number was high (which is good since the number they need is anything above 10), the staff were taking bets on how many stem cells would be collected in a day!  Bets ranged from 5 million to 20 million.

The machine that Alpesh was hooked up to looked like something out of Star Trek. It made whirring and clicking noises but worked effectively to collect a record 23.8 million stem cells in 6 hours!  Normally patients need to come in for 2 or 3 days to collect that many so he definitely over-achieved J  This will be enough for more than two transplants if necessary.

[by Sima]

This entry was posted on February 9, 2009 at 9:48 pm and is filed under Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.