Yesterday, we ate dinner with four ladies who are here from Bristol, TN named Karen, Linda, Rosie and their Mom. Karen has Multiple Myeloma. Linda has bladder and cervical cancer. Rosie and their Mom are the caregivers. We noticed that they always sat together at dinner. We had no idea that they were all from the same family. That's what being family is all about.
This evening, Coach Dave Loos and the men's basketball team from Austin Peay University in Clarksville, TN served the residents here at Hope Lodge a catered pasta dinner. Coach Loos and the players were all great.
The players had a great time playing ball with Cole. Cole is the little five year old boy who has Differentiated Heterogeneous Carcinoma whom I talked about in the last update. One of the players playing with Cole in the pictures below is Matt Hasse, their 6'9" center. Cole was barely taller than Matt's knees. I mentioned to Cole's mom that we had a bunch of people praying for Cole up in Kentucky, and she was very thankful.
Mary Jo told one of the players that we were from Louisville. She asked him if he knew the Louisville Cardinals won the championship. He kind of grunted and said "yeah". Probably jealous.
After Mary Jo's Neupogen shot today, they did blood labs. The results indicated that she was not ready for them to collect stem cells, yet. So, we had to go back to the hospital at 8:30 this evening for a Mobozil shot to really get her stem cells percolating.
She will have another Neupogen shot bright and early in the morning. Then, they will start collecting stem cells using the extracting machine shortly after that. It will depend on how the collection process goes whether she has another Mobozil shot tomorrow evening, or not.
One of the side effects of the Neupogen shots is pain in the patient's bones. The more shots that you get the more the pain is supposed to increase. Mary Jo has had very little pain after the four shots.
She said that she knew that she wasn't ready for the collection process to begin because she had not really had any pain, yet. I told her the stem cell mobilization process must be just like the gym. No pain - no gain. Actually, The nurse told us that the amount of pain wasn't a good indicator as to whether you were ready, or not.
We're hoping that they can get the two million stem cells that they need in the seven hour collection session tomorrow. Then, she won't need another Mobozil shot, and we can head home on Friday morning. Otherwise, it will be late Friday afternoon before we can get out of here.
I hope that nobody got hit too hard by the hail storm in Louisville yesterday evening. We are supposed to have severe storms here in Nashville in the overnight hours tomorrow night. Praying for no hail.
Please pray for a great collection tomorrow. I sound like a pastor don't I.
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