And now we wait...

In other words, the transplant is done!

I reported on monday that everything was moving right along albeit a bit rocky for Cathy as she has some reactions and side effects that would then repeat themselves on tuesday during her "part two" of the blood draw.
Each days draw took about 3 to 4 hours and has been reported that on monday, they retrieved 38 million stem cells and on tuesday, 50 million. I am told that the doctors were "thrilled" and all those millions went into Margie on tuesday.

So, after Cathy finished up at the hutch she was able to go back to her hotel with Jeanni (Jeanni and Greg and boys came up to help Cathy- a perfectly timed visit, as it turns out what with Cathy's condition at this point) So, with Jeanni and Richard in place for Cathy, our story continues...

So, on Margies end, tuesday started with her everyday blood draw at the hutch then onto the full body radiation which lasted approximately 45 minutes . She said it wasn't too hard because they actually wanted her to be moving around on the table, so they played rock and roll and Margie got to do as much groovin to the music as she felt inclined.

After that, she went to go to Cathy's bedside, who was still in the middle of her draw. Deborah, Mike, Richard, Jeanni and Robert were there and to play a joke on all of them, Margie came into the room dragging one of her legs like it had been wiped out by the radiation. Just like Margie to want to have some fun!

So, after all that, Margie and Robert got a little rest at the apartment then onto the University Hospital where the transplant was scheduled to start in the afternoon. When I spoke with Mike at around 5pm, the hospital was running late, still getting her room ready, etc. Finally, the stem cell infusion started around 9:30pm and lasted 5 hours. This is done very slowly as to not overwhelm the body.

I spoke with Margie this morning . She'd finally gotten to sleep around 2am, and had just finished eating breakfast which included a small arsenal of drugs.
With Cathy's stem cells now finally in place, what happens is that these two individual immune systems would be inclined to fight it out- so now Margie takes heavy hitter imunosuppressants to keep both immune systems down. Then slowly, the drugs begin to get tapered off. (This takes months) This won't begin to happen for two months. So for now, her immune system is at it's most fragile, as I eluded to in previous posts.

The first 100 days is the first milestone. During this time, she'll be getting her daily blood draws and taking a lot of drugs that are specific to suppressing the immune system (s) and anti rejection meds. (last report was that she's taking about 35 pills daily)
Also during this time she'll be watched very closely for signs of infection, drug caused side effects, and host vs. graft disease.

So, assuming that she sails on by all of the above, hopefully this blog will become a real snoozer.

After one year, that's typically when they'll know if Cathy's immune system has taken over Margies. So, then the happy ending will be that Margie has a whole new immune system, courtesy of Cathy!

Keep those thoughts and prayers coming- this 'aint over! (but all in all, Margie's doing great!)

Love, Kathleen