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Apheresis: Stem Cell Harvest Day 1

I had my first stem cell harvest today. I’ve officially been receiving neupogen/neulasta shots for 8 days now. Last night was the most scary night I’ve had. No one told me that the shots might cause my heart to race; also, while they mentioned bone pain they didn’t mention that sometimes when you go from sitting or laying down to standing, the neupogen will make it feel like all the blood in your body is racing to your chest in a painful series of throbbing gushes that are just really scary. I didn’t know what was happening to my body yesterday and last night. Just leaning up in bed from laying flat would cause the throbbing gushing feeling and my heart was absolutely out of control. I was afraid I was having a whole body stroke or something, but they told me today that’s just a side effect some people experience. FYI to doctors… it’s good to mention crazy stuff like that BEFORE it happens.

Anyway, today went really smoothly. I went in for my blood test around 7:00 am, and when it came back my results were great. My red cell counts are up to 122, and while they only needed my CD34 stem cell counts to be at 1 they were above 20… that’s why I’ve had such terrible pain they say; my bones have been working double time to the 10th power :) . The apheresis itself is pretty simple. The catheter they’ve installed in my neck has in/out plugs. They just hook up the color coded lines to the machine and turn it on. Then it’s programmed to run for two hours pulling a total of 200ml of blood in 20 cycles of 10 mls each spaced about 6 minutes apart. I didn’t feel a thing really (other than when she had to remove my evil bandage because my skin is just raw meat under that stuff). Thank God she took it off though, it was killer itchy, and now it’s just all bubbled and gross; I put some of my soothing cream on it though and that’s helping it heal. Tomorrow should be even smoother than today and after that I’m DONE! Hoorray!

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 9:41 pm and is filed under J's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Apheresis: Stem Cell Harvest Day 1”

  1. Carrie Davis says:
    29 July, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    It’s amazing, isn’t it, the things that they forget to tell you! It’s fascinating to read about your stem cell harvest, Jackie! Thank you for sharing your story!

  2. Jacqueline says:
    29 July, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    It really is amazing the things the doctors forget to tell you; it’s terrible too to know that they’re well aware that it’s something common and scary. After I told my doctor about the racing heart and the throbbing/gushing sensation I was experiencing, he told me that was a common side effect that was so bad during clinical trials that neulasta/neupogen was nearly not approved. You’d think he would’ve wanted to tell me ahead of time so I wouldn’t have been terrified :) .

    I think the stem cell harvest really is fascinating. My blood cell counts are amazing after a week of the injections, and it’s just amazing to think that this process replaces the old bone marrow harvests which were really debilitatingly painful. The neupogen shots are painful and all, but it goes away pretty quickly, and I’m sure it’s much less painful than the old methods of extraction.

    Your new puppies are gorgeous by the way. Congratulations!

  3. Peter Mackay says:
    15 November, 2009 at 3:22 am

    Thanks for that. On my third day of Neupogen prior to harvest at St Vinnies. I just woke with the feeling that my heart was going to go bang… racing and pain. Took BP and its 143/ 81 and 99bps… very high for me.
    not game to go back to sleep!!