From Mike, Alison's Dad...

We are thanking our wonderful Heavenly Father for this day and thanking you all who prayed for the stem cell harvesting Alison had today!

She had an abundance of stem cells in her circulation, so the harvesting via the apharesis machine took half the time that was anticipated and yielded enough stem cells for this transplant AND one or two more, if needed in the future.

It was a bit scary for Alison, having much of her blood filtered through a machine. She also had facial, hand and foot tingling due to a drop in calcium, which is common, and required IV and oral calcium which took care of it.

She was quite fatigued afterwards. It will take a few days for the bone pain from the packed marrow to fully subside.

She had the tri-infusion catheter site (her “port”) examined and the dressing changed. It seems to be doing fine.

As her catheter will need to be flushed every night with saline and a heparin solution to keep it from clotting off, Andy and I were instructed in how to do it. We are both now certified venous catheter flushers! 

God uses your prayers for His purposes for Alison, so thank you and keep them coming! Particularly to keep the catheter from infection and for peace of mind and heart from the indwelling Holy Spirit as the transplant draws closer. 

God bless each one of you.