Apheresis Success!

The apheresis went amazingly well today. The goal was to collect 15 million cells over a period of 5 days. If Jackson collected more than that they could stop before the 5 day mark.

Every day the nurse would draw blood and the lab would run a CD34 test to predict when Jacksons blood counts would come up. I was skeptical that they would be able to tell before hand, and honestly I was worried that we would miss our window. Turns out those Bone Marrow doctors really do know what they are talking about.

This morning they took Jackson down to the Procedures Lab to place a catheter in his left leg. Instead of riding in his bed to the surgery like most kid, the nurse and the tech pushed an empty bed through the halls and Jackson followed behind driving his remote control car.

Today between 12:15 and 6:30pm Jackson was hooked up to an apheresis machine. During this time the machine cycled through his blood six times. The machine separated his red blood cells from his platelets and his white blood cells. The white blood cells were collected in a bag and after the collection was done we waited patiently for the lab to count how many cells they were able to harvest.

Jackson blew his goal of 15 million out of the water!! They collected 33.8 MILLION cells today. More than double of what they were hoping for. They actually wanted 15 million cells per kilo- so a total of 270 million. The total they actually got was 608,400 million. That's a lot of cells in one tiny little bag.

My prayers were answered. Your prayers were answered.

The catheter came out tonight which was a bit traumatic. This has been a long, emotional day. But it has a happy ending.

As long as Jackson starts eating again we should get to go home tomorrow. Our family will be back together again soon.

The next thing I am starting to worry about is the upcoming MRI Jackson has. Through that scan we will see how well his cancer is responding to the chemo drugs.
One step at a time. We can make it through this- one step at a time.