Mary Jo Update #10 - 3 Strikes, but not out yet.

We went to the hospital early this morning for Mary Jo's fifth Neupogen shot. Afterwards, they did blood labs and started her stem cell collection using an ephersis
machine. That's what Mary Jo is tethered to in the pictures. It's the newest model. They've only had for a couple of weeks.

Here at Vanderbilt, the collection sessions are only four hours long. They started at 9am, and we were out of there around 1:30pm. They collected 600,000 out of 2,000,000 stem cells that they need for the transplant. So, we are at the hospital again this evening for another Mobozil shot. Then, back to the hospital in the morning for another Neupogen shot and more collecting.

The nurse in the collection center said that she has three strikes against her in the collection process. Typically, men produce more stem cells than women, and small women, like Mary Jo, over 60 produce less stem cells than larger, younger women.

The nurse also changed the dressing covering her catheter while we there. They wanted it changed before we head home.

Pray for a better collection day tomorrow. Hopefully, the Neupogen shot that will get this evening will do the job.



The yellow stuff in the picture is plasma that was extracted, and the red stuff is red blood cells mixed with stem cells. They try to extract as few red cell from the patient as possible. The plasma will be used in the infusion process on transplant day. The stem cells are counted in the pathology lab.