Day 12 - "Engrafting"

Tuesday, November 26 - Day 12

For Stem Cell Transplant patients, the days you look forward to is the process of "engrafting" of your stem cells.  In simplified terms, this is when your stem cells start growing red and white blood cells.  It's also when your body feels much better after feeling beyond horrible on Days 6-8.  The first sign of engrafting is when your blood test results start moving upwards.

Yesterday, Day 11, we saw a blip that my results were starting to go up after bottoming out.  Today, continued improvements.  I know many of you are not physicians or nurses but you can read graphs.  Where you see the graphs going up, the results are moving in the right direction.  The only one which looks a little funny is the Neutrophils result.  Reason for no graph is that for the past week, the # of neutrophils has been zero (too few to count) and today it is at 0.15. You can see the numbers are all in red, meaning they are not yet within the normal levels, but going where we want them to.

Dr. Gertz said that since we live so close to Mayo (less than 2 hrs drive), he is willing to send us home the moment that my Neutrophils hit 0.5 and my Platelets are at 50 (currently at 20), and continue daily monitoring from home. Wow!

IT"S WORKING!!!!!  I'm feeling better every day.  All I can say is that we are so grateful.  We see the light at the end of the tunnel!  Thank you all for the continued prayers.

Buddy & Ria