To pass the time I was given a personal DVD player and a
choice of movies. I always wanted to see Black Swan and it was a good way to
waste a couple of hours when I couldn’t move my head very far. It wasn’t as
good as I was expecting after all the rave reviews. I guessed the whole plot pretty
early on. But that didn’t stop me wanting to share all the details with Alex. I
was a little too enthusiastic in my description though and the apheresis
machine started beeping with an error message. The Asian technician narrowed
her eyes.
“Could you not
talk?”
I felt like I was
a school child being reprimanded for talking during an important lesson. I shut
up and read a magazine for the next couple of hours.
The good thing
was that before I left, the technician took the tubes dangling from my neck,
wrapped them in white gauze then tucked them inside the tan elastic bandage I
got at the hospital, so they wouldn’t bounce. It was much more comfortable. At
home I sat in a big arm chair and tried to keep my neck in a comfortable
position. There wasn’t any sharp pain, just a dull ache. I imagined it was like
whiplash would feel.
The next day was
Saturday. The blood service was closed so we had to go to Auckland hospital for
more harvesting. The technician who told me to be quiet the day before arrived
soon after we did. Before she even said hello she asked loudly:
“Where’s my
machine?”
The apheresis
machine should have been delivered to the ward. Before I could worry that the
day was going to be a complete failure, the machine was wheeled in on a hand
trolley by a beefy delivery man. In a flash the small woman had opened packages
of sterile tubes and bags. She drew blood out of both tubes on my neck with
large syringes then threw them in a bin she brought with her. Seeing my blood
spattering around the bin was a little disturbing but she was on automatic. The
machine was threaded and turned on. She worked so fast I thought she must be
missing a hair appointment. The tubes that led from my neck were taped to the
pillow behind me. I was like a dog on a short leash. I only had centimetres to
move in. But I wasn’t going to complain. I collected 2.1million cells at the
blood service the previous day and I was hoping for similar success.
Alex set up his
laptop to get some work done, I opened a book and we were off again for another
long day. I refused offers of drinks because I didn’t want to stop the
collection process to go to the toilet. But the technician convinced me to have
a drink. Not surprisingly just before lunch I needed the bedpan. She put it on
a chair, untaped my neck, pulled the curtain closed and stood on the other side
of it. Relieving yourself when someone is waiting for you on the other side of
a thin curtain is intimidating. I performed admirably under the circumstances.
After the
collection she put my bags of stem cells and blood samples into a Styrofoam bin
with ice. She loaded her boxes up on to a luggage trolley. She said goodbye and
hurried off as if she was about to miss a flight.
We were allowed
to go home and soon after Charlotte arrived from Wellington. When she saw the
position I was holding my neck in, she joked that I was like Batman in his mask
with no peripheral vision. I had to turn my whole body to see sideways. A blood
services doctor rang about 6.30pm. I had collected 1.4 million cells. I was to
go back to the hospital the next morning for a blood test to see if they were
able to squeeze any more out of me.
The next morning
I was over it, all of it. I wanted a day to myself. I wanted to stay in bed and
wallow all day long. But I couldn’t.
Alex came in to the bedroom with another GCSF shot, and at 7.45am we were on
our way again. I had felt like Frankenstein for the last three nights. I
couldn’t turn my head with the tubes hanging out of my neck and there was
always a dull ache at the site. From a high of fourteen my count was now down
to four. But they still wanted to drain my blood and see what they could get.
We started at 1pm. The first three hours were okay. I read and did puzzles.
Then I needed the bedpan. When I was reconnected to the apheresis machine it
went nuts. The alarm and error message wouldn’t stop no matter what the
technician did. Finally she made me lean back farther into the pillow. The
machine stopped beeping and she taped me into this position. My eyes could only
stare at the trim between the top of the wall and the ceiling. I put my knees
up and tried balancing a book on them to read. I stayed in that precarious position
for two hours. When I finished, the technician packed her Styrofoam box again
and left. I had to stay at the hospital and get a transfusion of platelets
before I was allowed to go home. A low
platelet count is a fairly common side effect of stem cell harvesting. A male
nurse told me the side effects of a platelet transfusion could be severe, with
chills or a rash. I rolled my eyes. Great! It was just another day at the
office. But after half an hour the machine bonged to say I was done and I
didn’t encounter any of the dreaded ill effects. It was 7.45pm. We had been at
the hospital for nearly twelve hours.
The first call I
got the next morning was from a bone marrow nurse specialist. I had collected
only .25 million cells in the five hours I spent on the machine the previous
day. All together I had collected a total of 3.75 million cells. It was not the
five million targeted for me. The nurse sensed my disappointment.
“It’s fine. It’s
enough. The target of five million was high and often patients don’t reach the
target amount,” she said.
“Mmm.”
I felt like a child who had come in second in the hundred
metre sprint. “You tried your best.” It wasn’t good enough. I wanted those
extra cells on hand in case I needed them.
Getting the
central line out was far easier than putting it in. I was back at Auckland
hospital for what I thought would be another surgical procedure followed by
jokes from the funny Brit. Instead I was pointed towards a day stay bed. The
young male registrar came to see me. He examined my neck, cleaned it, removed
the stitches and said:
“Breathe in until
I say stop”.
I filled my lungs and imagined the amount of blood that
would pour out of my neck when the massive central line came out. I felt a
little tug.
“Breathe
normally.”
He put pressure
on the cut for a few minutes then put a little white bandage on it. The
incision was only the size of his pinky fingernail. I couldn’t believe it. For
four days it felt like I had a huge piece of dried cannelloni stuck inside my
neck and now it was gone in one deep breath, leaving only a tiny cut.
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