Mary Jo Update #11 - Our Little "Miracle": She's Still In The Game

We went to the stem cell early this morning for Mary Jo's sixth Neupogen shot, blood labs and and second day of stem cell collection. They started the collection at around 9am. The collection nurse, Diane Matthews, said that if more stem cells than yesterday were not collected the doctor in charge of the collection center, Dr. Young, and the transplant doctor, Dr. Savani, would have to discuss how to proceed. It sounded ominous.

At that time, we were all hopeful that Mary Jo's collection today would be more than the 600,000 stem cells that were collected yesterday. Then, about 10am the results of the results came in, and they were not good.

Her white blood cell count reading had went down from 40 on Thursday to 36 today. More importantly, something called the CD34 indicator had went down from .3 on Thursday to .2 today. The CD34 indicates how many stem cells had been freed by the Neupogen and Mobozil shots from the bone marrow, and were floating around in the blood stream where they can be collected by the epheresis machine.

Dr. Young came in, and gave us the bad news about the collection results and explained that the chances of beating yesterday's collection number was slim because of what the decreasing blood count numbers indicated.

She went on to say that she would be meeting with our transplant doctor, Dr. Savani, and that most likely we would have to go back home for two weeks and rest.Then, come back and begin the Neupogen/Mobozil mobilization process again. They would save the stem cells collected yesterday and today, and the remainder would be collected when we return to make the 2,000,000 goal.

After their conference, Dr. Savani came in and confirmed the bad news that Dr. Young had given us. Mary Jo and I were devastated. This would have pushed our D+30 day back around three weeks. Instead of getting to go home on June 4th after the transplant recovery period is over. We would be going home around June 25th. More time before we would be able get our lives back to normal.

Everyone sounded so hopeless about collecting more than 600,000 stem cells today. I felt so hopeless and depressed that I asked Dr. Savani if we should just go back to the Hope Lodge, pack up and leave after the stem cell collection, or should we hang around and wait for the collection results call.

Dr. Savani tried his best to make us feel better, and said "no crying" as he handed Mary Jo a box of tissues. He told us that he would call us on Monday after the weekly transplant team meeting to give us a date when to come back to Vanderbilt to start the collection process over again, but he said that we should stay in Nashville, and wait for the call.

The collection process ended about 1:30pm both days. We didn't get the call to notify us of the count number on Thursday until 5:15pm. So, I called the housing coordinator at Vanderbilt to notify her that we would not be checking out until Saturday morning.

The collection count call came at 3:15pm today. Mary Jo and I both looked at each other, like well hear comes the bad news. How bad will it be? After Mary Jo answered the calI and had talked for a minute, I looked over at her, and she actually had a smile on her face. I thought well she's had time to process the impending bad news, and now she was able to take it better than when we first heard it from Dr. Savani at the collection center.

It turns out that through the grace of God, and all of your prayers and ours that the news was not bad at all. Dr. Savani's nurse practitioner, Hava Fife, told Mary Jo the great news. Despite the lower blood count numbers, today's collection had beaten Thursday's number by 150,000 stem cells. Today's collection was 750,000, and she is still in the ball game.

Hava told her that we were go to the hospital for another Mobozil shot at 8:30pm tonight and another Neupogen shot at 7:30am Saturday morning. Since the collection center is closed on Saturday, they are going to move the epheresis machine to the transplant center for the collection at 9am. If another collection is needed, we will do the same routine on Sunday morning. The most Mobozil shots that they can give a patient is four. But we are praying, a fourth one won't be needed.

I cannot tell you what a roller coaster ride we were on today. I reflected back on the day that I looked up the meaning of the word odyssey in the dictionary (a long wandering or voyage marked by many changes in fortune), and decided that "Our Vanderbilt Odyssey" was an appropriate name for this blog and the journey/wandering/voyage that we are on. Even though this was only one day, we had all the components of an odyssey rolled into this tumultuous Friday.

I would call today's great collection number a "miracle". But, our collection nurse told us on Thursday that sometimes the patient is still in the mobilizing phase during the collection process. So, there is a valid scientific explanation for what happened today. They do blood labs after the collection is completed. The difference between yesterday's and today's pre-collection and post-collection blood count numbers was striking. Whereas, yesterday's were consistently down around 10%, some of today's were up by as 25%.

Even though the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of the Saints would never declare this a "miracle". It will forever more be our "little miracle", and I believe that all of you who offered a prayer for Mary Jo's successful collection process share in the great news that we received this afternoon.

From the bottom of our hearts we thank you for every thought and prayer that you have sent our way, and ask for your continued prayers as we continue our odyssey taking one day at a time.

May God bless all of you. Saint Peregrine, pray for us.

When you get into a tight place
and everything goes against you,
till it seems you cannot hold on a minute longer,
never give up then, for that is just
the place and time the tide will turn.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe