11/15/10 - 02/02/11: Transplant Begins

On December 27 they infused me with melphalan which is a powerful chemo drug that kills off your immune system and, hopefully, any remaining cancer cells.  I had a bit of a meltdown as they were starting it because I was afraid.  Up to this point, none of the hoops I had jumped through had been blazing.  I had a few that were flaming, but I didn’t get “burned.”  This hoop turned out to be a blazing five alarm fire!  


On the third day, they transplanted half of my stem cells and on the fourth day the other half for a total of 5 million.  The other 5 million are still frozen  and in cold storage at SCCA.  On the first day of transplant my blood pressure dropped precipitously to about 60 over 40 and they were scrambling, but additional IV fluid helped to bring it back up.  On the second day, I had a little nausea.  The nurse said that many transplant patients are nauseated and vomiting throughout the transplanting of cells. Thankfully, that didn’t happen to me. The wonderful nursing staff made me a birthday card since they consider a transplant is a rebirth.  They released me from the hospital on my real birthday, January 1. Little did I know that I would soon be back in the hospital.