Luke has continued to do GREAT this last week. Eating a TON, building things- more gigantic legos and he also built a watch. We were hopeful the watch would take him several days to keep him busy, but it took him about 2 hours, if that. It is a very cool watch though! It gets very lonely and difficult to find enough things to keep his mind and hands busy when he feels well.

I went home for a few nights last Thursday and got to reset and be with my Masball and my mom. Oh, and Luke got a break from me. Ben stayed with Luke and then we switched back last Sunday. I cry when I leave Luke and I cry when I leave Mason. I am so happy to get home to Mason and I am so happy to get back to Luke at the hospital. It all sucks. I kind of wish one of my kids was an asshole because maybe then it would be easier. Nah. I don’t really mean that.

Despite brushing my teeth this morning with face cleanser, I feel fairly well rested.

Luke’s counts have been dropping throughout the last 10 days or so and today pretty much reached bottom- zero. His platelets hit 15 today and his transfusion cutoff is 10. He had some bleeding so his providers decided to go ahead and give him a bag of platelets. The transfusion just finished and had no bad reactions.

Luke and I got to spend the evening with my cousin Galen Mason yesterday. He was here from Chicago and we don’t get to see him often. We had lots of great talks and laughs. Luke and I could sit and talk to Galen for days. He is one of the smartest and funniest, people I know.

Dr. Kohler, Luke’s transplant doc came for a visit this afternoon. Of course, Luke and I peppered him with questions. Here goes…I am Luke’s donor.  Dr. Kohler said plan on it, unless I hear otherwise.  There was a 25 year old male in Germany that was a 9/10 that they thought upon further testing could be a 10/10 match for Luke, but he is not.  There is a 39 year old lady in England that was a 9/10 match they thought the same of but based on her size, he didn’t think she would be a better match than Lukes mama.  They will continue to update the search for Luke for a bit but we are almost to the cutoff time to finding a perfect match.

How they will retrive my stem cells has changed. I will be hooked up to an Apheresis machine for about 8 hours with an IV in each arm.  One side will remove blood from me, then it goes into a machine and spins the cells and they go in and basically like a straw, extract the cells they want.  Then they send the rest of the blood back into my other arm so that they do not take too much blood out of me.  They continue this for the day and hope they get enough, or I will go do it again.  They are doing this due to my size compared to Luke.  Dr. Kohler doesn’t think they can get enough marrow out of me to be enough for Luke by doing the needle way and extracting it from my hip bone.  Doing it this way, unfortunately, increases Lukes chances of developing GVHD.  

To prepare for this they will run some more blood tests on me and do a full physcial. I will receive GCSF ( filgrastim and granulocyte colony-stimulating factor) everyday for 5 days prior to harvesting.  I don’t know if I will receive this through an IV or leg injections.  This stimulates my bone marrow to produce granulocytes and stem cells and release them into my bloodstream  We don’t know the timing on this. Dr. Kohler will either have me do this prior to Luke going into transplant (once Luke starts the chemo regimen pre-transplant (5 days leading up to transplant day) there is no going back so he may collect mine and freeze them to make sure he has enough. Because there is no going back, Dr. K will have a plan B ready to go (the 10/10 cord blood from the boy in Australia) and a plan C-not sure who that will be. He said I know this is not ideal for you Suz. I quickly interupted him and said he could cut off my leg if he needed it, and I wouldn’t care. He understands.

I asked if I can have xanax during this and he said yes. I am such a wimp, I will need it. I also do not need to curb my enthusiasm for Chardonnay in preparation. I’ll take that as a win. He did say he would encourage lots of red meat, spinach, and foods rich in iron. Check that box!

So why is a 50% related donor, me, better than even a 9/10 match?  It is because Luke and I’s genetics are similar and his body has a less chance of attacking my cells that I give to him.  A related donor, unless a 10/10 has a better prognosis with statistically fewer complications. 

There was a lot more information we received but that was the main jist. My head is spinning a bit but we are READY TO GO. Let’s get this ball rollin’! We don’t know exact timing of transplant but think it will be sometime at the very end of February or beginning of March.

I am going to wash my face with toothpaste.

Buckets,

Suz