Yoooo-whoooooooo, where are you hiding? O stem cells, where are youuuu- a? While laying about yesterday getting totally fagged out what with the tubing and the blood going a-out and then coming a-in with a little extra anti-coagulant and citrate and sodium mixed in and did I forget to mention the industrious Betsy? running all around me doing the nasty "P" work. (I thought that was what I did with the curtain pulled, palease-a). Did I also forget to mention my father? Well, he was there by my side mixing the biology all up but dead-on with what the people do/where are we going/why is education not a priority and yes! half - cups of coffee. No scones though as there were eaten in route from coffee stand to hospital room. 

I suppose I should start at the beginning. Saturday, while slowly twirling my finger in my gin and tonic and admiring my lovely wife's legs, skirted of course, in the back yard drawing, palease-a, I thought it might be too early since Tx to have a drink. Halfway through, I became convinced. By dinner, I began to whinny like a horse as waves of pressure rode through my illiac crest. Nightfall, brought fits of insane-like laughter as the damn horse kept kicking my back. Pain-killers let me sleep half the night. Then the dark horse rode me through morning into day. The pain lasted through late afternoon and then left abruptly. 

When we checked in for apheresis, Betsy said doctors receive pain descriptions like mine with ALRIGHT! meaning the mobilization is working and your bone-marrow is spitting cells out into the blood as fast as it can make them. Where they float around on the red blood cell couches waiting for their next todo.  Little did they know that Betsy was waiting impatiently for them ( and us to show up). 

After checking blood counts and getting the green light, even though platelets were below 100, Betsy hooked me, manual style, to my new blood brother COBE. Manual style means the apheresis nurse gets to "read" the color of your blood sample as it is pulled from your body. Did you know white blood cells are red? (The beginning of where we lost my father). Again Betsy " you know how a little bit of food coloring goes a long way? Well, it's just like that with blood. Even in the white blood cell faction there are a very few red cells, coloring the whole bag". 

The apheresis machine pulls the blood from your body and then centrifuges to separate. Centrifugation pulls the red cells to the bottom of the tube. Floating between the red cells and the yellowish plasma (B Vitamins!) is the buffy coat. We want the buffy coat.  In the buffy coat are the lymphocytes and stem cells. How many stem cells is determined later in the lab where the collection is sent for cryopreservation and characterisation. After centrifuging the cells, COBE decants the buffy coat to a collection bag and then returns the red cells and plasma to my body. Around 5 hours into it Betsy could see that we were getting close to our target collection amount.

"Everyone is different. We won't know how many stem cells until they count in the lab. Dr. Fernando will call to confirm the collected amounts".

I left feeling (and looking) rather green. At least four of my blood volumes had passed through COBE, and he kept one cup of it. We visited floor 8 where Brittaney was working. Looked into the closed doors of the bone marrow transplant unit. 8 beds. 8 patients each spending an average of ~30 days in those rooms. ? 72 patients a year?

Made our way home. Dad, Zoe, Kai and I went for walk. The greeness began to leave me.

As promised at dinner, Dr. Fernando called. "Mr. Jacobs, you are more than okay. You are very good. We have 6.6 million cells/kilogram. You will not be able to see Betsy tomorrow. And, no more neupogen".