Day 0 and Day +1

I apologize for not posting yesterday but by the time I got both boys settled in ,it was about 1:30 am and I was exhausted. It was quite a day. Derek arrived yesterday around 9:30,went into surgery around 1:30 and was done by 3:00 pm. The procedure takes awhile because they harvest 5 ml at a time until a total of 500ml is withdrawn. So for Derek what that boils down to is 50 sticks into the each hip bone for a total of 100 sticks. They only take 5 mls at a time because the first 5 ml taken is rich with cells. Anything more would just be blood. They need a certain number of cells so in order to obtain it, they need about 500 ml of marrow. The marrow is then filtered and processed. The bag of marrow was ready to be infused intravenously into Dale by 4:30 pm. There was a room full of nurses and doctors present to deal with any complications that may arise during the infusion. Derek joined us in the room soon after. Kristen and Dr. Moore came to see us after the procedure and shared with us a cute story about Derek. They said Derek smiled all the way into the o.r. and until he fell asleep. When he woke up, the first words he said was "thank you" and continued to thank everyone in the o.r. room. Dr. Moore said he made the nurses cry. They said he was the nicest patient they had all day. The marrow is infused quickly before the stem cells die. Because of the rapid rate of infusion, Dale became hypertensive and nauseous. They gave him 20mg of Lasix and 1 mg of Ativan. The ativan ( similar to valium) made Dale very happy and feeling good. Derek was very sore and a little pale. It was a busy evening and night taking care of both of them but I enjoyed having both of them. Derek was discharged this morning which made Dale sad and start to cry. Dale is losing his hair now. Should be bald in the next few days. He doesn't seem too bothered by the hair loss as much this time. Today day +1 he will receive methotrexate 17mg iv x 1 for prevention of the GVH (graft vs. host disease). Dale is feeling better today. He asked for the hospital teacher to work with him for 30 minutes this morning. Thank you for your extra prayers and thoughts yesterday. May God continue to bless you all...