Day +196

I am fine today. Continue from yesterday…

About 2 months before the transplant, blood stem cells are collected from my third sister. Most of these stem cells reside in the bone marrow and there are only a small number of them ‘escaped’ into the blood stream (peripheral blood). As collecting stem cells from bone marrow is an invasive and painful procedure, peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs) become an excellent alternative.

In order to make sure that there are enough stem cells in the peripheral blood, the donor is given Neupogen injection twice per day over a period of four days. This stimulates the bone marrow to produce many stem cells so that they ‘flood’ the blood stream. During the stem cells collection, blood from the donor is drawn from one arm to a machine which filters out the stem cells. The blood is then returned to the body through the other arm. A typical collection took about 8 hours to complete, but the lab only took 2 hours to collect sufficient stem cells from my sister. I attributed this fast collection to her ‘heavy weight’ body which carries bigger number of stem cells. Who say big size is no good? :-)

If the lab fails to collect stem cells through the arm due to small veins or vague veins, they have to collect them from the groin which is more painful and inconvenient. In order to make her veins on the arm big and apparent, my sister came to my house everyday to do ‘weight lifting’ and ‘weight throwing’ using my daughter Adriel :-)

I really appreciate my sister’s determination in donating her stem cells to me. It is her stem cells that produce blood in my body now. In other words, we share the same blood. You see, how closely related are we?

To be continued and see you next post :-)