Beaten and battered, down but not out, we have arrived at the threshold of plan 'C' in hopes of getting Emmah's stem cells. I suppose the irony (if there is any) is that we don't have a real plan for them once we get them other than tossing them in the deep freeze. Several of the therapy options require stem cells and because most of those require those cells to be her own we now have to go in and get them.
That's right, we have to go into the marrow and dislodge them from their cozy environment and bag 'em up. See, the cells are there, they just didn't want to be pushed out into the blood stream to be harvested peripherally, so now we need to go in there and yank their tiny little covers off and suck 'em out.
If you're late in tuning in here and don't feel like reading in the archives, her CD34 count stood @ 5 yesterday... they wanted it to be 20. Even so, they said (yesterday) that if we came back in today and it was still 5 or better they would go ahead and do the procedure.
It was only 3.4 today... in a word sucky.
Stem cell extraction may come as soon as next week, but the doctor wants to look at her most recent BMA report/results to see if it's worth while to even go in. He said that in over 20 years of doing this, he's only seen one patient that they weren't able to extract enough from the marrow. As battered as Emmah's marrow is, pray that the report sez that her marrow is enough intact to support an extraction. It will allow us to open more doors if we have her cells.
See... SUCKY!
KEIYTAP
1 comment:
Hiya- sorry to read that CD34s were too low today. Will keep my fingers crossed for good news on the bone marrow. Sending lots of positive energy and hugs your way-
Love,
Auntie Lisa
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