Stem cell collection

So even though Case has cancer in his bone marrow, he still has "rock star bone marrow!" His blood counts have recovered at lightning speed, like they usually do. So the doctors had to hurry and slip him in for surgery last minute to put in place the tubing that will pump his blood out so that the stem cells can be collected. Once they are separated, his blood will be pumped back into him.

It's nice to have that happen ahead of schedule. We start tomorrow. Then we will wait for a CT scan next week to see if we have any shrinkage in the tumors. If all we see is growth, then we wont do chemo because there is no point in pumping him full of poisons that aren't working. If there is some positive progress, then he will get some crazy, super dooper high doses of chemo that will destroy his bone marrow, hence the need for his own stem cells to "rescue" himself.

He ate half a slice of pizza after surgery today. That was a nice treat to see, as he usually eats one pretzel stick a day. He was feisty too...and nice change from zombie mode.

Pray for good collection and for the chemo to be working! The red and blue tubes are the catheter. The other tube under the gauze is his blasted chest tube.