{"id":1756,"date":"2014-09-04T21:16:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T04:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/?p=1756"},"modified":"2014-09-23T06:16:53","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:16:53","slug":"the-lonely-donor-part-v-preparation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/04\/the-lonely-donor-part-v-preparation\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lonely Donor, Part V: Preparation"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Not<\/a>
Not sniffing my pits, just showing off all the bruises and spots from my subcutaneous chicken-wing filgrastim shots.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Good morning, fourth metatarsal.<\/p>\n

Hello, tibia. Hello, fibula. Right back atcha,’\u00a0femoral head.<\/p>\n

Unfolding from my fetal position among the dogs and husband, today I can feel my\u00a0thoracic spine, right there at T5. The metacarpal bones\u00a0of my right hand spent the fretful night reminding me that I am, in fact, right-handed.<\/p>\n

This is my life on filgrastim<\/a> – the stem-cell stimulating drug. I got two shots of it per day for five days leading up to and including the donation – one shot in each chicken wing, among the ample, subcutaneous margins of my triceps.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Be<\/a>
Be kind to the nurses and they will be kind to you. A double shot of my baby’s love… if your baby is a middle-aged leukemia patient.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dosage is based on weight.\u00a0Even though the Mayo scales register in kilos,\u00a0they still don’t lie: My years of beer and bacon<\/a> left me heavy enough to warrant the\u00a0two-shot regimen. Upon learning that I had been officially cleared for the peripheral blood stem cell donation<\/a>\u00a0for the second time,\u00a0I set about trying to change all that and be the best donor I could be.<\/p>\n

I started lifting weights in hopes of making my veins larger (It didn’t and doesn’t). I stopped drinking alcohol (impedes platelet growth, doesn’t mix well with filgrastim), and I ensured I met 100% of my recommended daily allowance of water<\/a> (3 liters) every day by using my handy, Patrick Bertinelli-designed AddWater app<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I also invited my old nemesis, kale<\/a>, back into the pantry… along with sweet potatoes, halibut, avocados, spinach, yogurt, potato-potatoes, more kale, almonds, pumpkin seeds, salmon, real milk, white beans\u00a0and still\u00a0more kale (but only\u00a0raw or cooked –\u00a0not in “chip” form).<\/p>\n

This\u00a0pageant of potassium-magnesium-and-calcium-loading was\u00a0supposed to\u00a0ease blood flow once I\u00a0was\u00a0hooked up to the apheresis machine, but the trifecta of nutrients did\u00a0little to help me shed those last, pesky 6.8 kilos.\u00a0One would think I’d at least drop 0.45 kilos\u00a0or two for the sacrifice\u00a0–\u00a0especially since I gave up bacon for the duration, but no – \u00a0I just got to be hyperaware of my sphenoid bone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prior to filgrastim, I wasn’t aware I had a sphenoid bone. I wasn’t particularly aware of my third distal phalange<\/a>, either, unless I was unfurling it while waving to motorists who have no qualms about crowding me in the bike lane.<\/p>\n

Heart-pumping, veins at least looking<\/em> like pipelines of stem-cell joy, it was on one of those 14-miles rides up Scottsdale Road, as I gasped the fragrant backdraft of a\u00a0garbage truck, that I had an\u00a0epiphany:<\/p>\n

“WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING? I COULD\u00a0DIE OUT HERE! THIS DUDE CAN’T ACCEPT MY STEM CELLS IF THEY’RE SMEARED ACROSS THE GRILL OF A CURB MASTER SIDE-LOADER!”<\/p>\n

I finally understood what I’d been missing all my life… what it means to be a woman:<\/p>\n

“OH MY GOD: THIS IS WHAT IT’S LIKE\u00a0TO BE PREGNANT! I’M PREGNANT WITH A MIDDLE-AGED CANCER PATIENT!\u00a0NO WONDER CHI WANTS ME TO TAKE ALL THOSE DAMNED TESTS!<\/a>\u00a0 IF I GO, HE GOES! WE’RE NOT GONNA DIIIIEEEEE!!!!”<\/p>\n

Over the next two weeks, I did my damnedest to do STAY ALIVE: I militantly obeyed every speed limit sign and traffic-change admonition.\u00a0I stayed in the FAR RIGHT LANE and turned up my All-Classical K-BACH 89.5 when my fellow commuters tailgated me. I even avoided flashing my third distal phalange at them. I waited patiently at every cross walk, wore sensible shoes and avoided sushi (my favorite). \u00a0I went to bed at 9 PM sharp and awoke at 5:30 AM (much to Patrick’s chagrin). I meditated. I stretched. I flossed (OK, only 4 times, but still). I wore sunscreen EVERY. DAY. I even broke out the foam roller on my IT bands!<\/p>\n

Then on [ REDACTED ] at 7:45 in the morning, I received my first filgrastim shot, and the\u00a0nurses\u00a0kindly asked me to avoid weight-bearing exercise because it could lead to\u00a0SPLENIC RUPTURE<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After hearing SPLENIC RUPTURE, as in RUPTURE OF THE SPLEEN<\/em><\/strong>, I didn’t pay much attention to anything else. The phrases\u00a0“flu-like symptoms” and “bone and joint aches” drifted into my periphery, but they were manageable, especially since they’d given me a prescription for oxycodone (my precious<\/em>). But SPLENIC RUPTURE<\/strong> is serious shit – probably not something I’d be able to recover from in time to make my donation… and we were past the point of no return.<\/p>\n

Once the National Marrow Donor Program\u00a0got my IDM kit<\/a> and confirmed that\u00a0I was thankfully West Nile, Ebola and Chagas disease-free, the patient began\u00a0his pre-transplant regimen – wiping the marrow from his body and destroying his immune system. He would be\u00a0marking time as minus-days, counting down to his donation on Day Zero.<\/p>\n

If I didn’t survive the next [ REDACTED ] minus-days, his chances of survival were zero.<\/p>\n

I have never felt so AWARE OF BEING ALIVE… as opposed to being BLISSFULLY\u00a0UNAWARE OF THE SPECTER OF DEATH THAT LURKS AT EVERY TURN (car accidents! bicycle wrecks! heat exhaustion<\/a>! drowning<\/a>!\u00a0MRSA<\/a>! animal attacks!<\/a> communicable diseases<\/a>! choking hazards!<\/a>) If I could have wrapped myself in bubble-wrap, I would have, but suffocation lurks in every popping\u00a0dot.<\/p>\n

Instead, I became intimately aware of my anatomy as the five days of filgrastim filtered through my subcutaneous goodness and into my bones.<\/p>\n

Good afternoon, C-4, and your\u00a0little bursts of pain that rocket through my teeth\u00a0as I turn my head to check my mirrors. Oh,\u00a0I’m feeling you today, you crazy coccyx, especially as I climb out of the car. As soon as the movement fires, the pain escapes into another waiting joint.<\/p>\n

Why, oh, why do I have bucket seats, faithful pelvic bone? Ill-humored\u00a0humerus.<\/p>\n

My skeleton\u00a0announced\u00a0itself in a cavalcade of aches and pains each morning\u00a0as my stimulated stem cells eked their way from my marrow into my bloodstream. I don’t\u00a0how much 5 million stem cells weigh (not 6.8 kilos, according to the Mayo scales) but they weighed heavily on my heart and in my bones during those five days, like a tether connecting me to a stranger in a cancer ward some place far from me.<\/p>\n

I could not wait to help him.\u00a0We both had to stay alive for me to do that.<\/p>\n

\"I'm<\/a>
I’m allowed to send cards with no identifying information to my patient. I thought this was incredibly fitting. I sent him one card per day during my round of shots.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BONUS ROUND<\/strong>: If you live or work within a 5-mile radius of\u00a0\u00a0Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, their cafeteria is outstanding – and cheap! I had a fresh salmon and wheat berry salad sprinkled with real bacon bits for only $5 (FIVE DOLLARS!)<\/strong>\u00a0I don’t even know what a wheat berry is, but it did my heart good to know that Mayo Clinic uses bacon on their food. BACON!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Good morning, fourth metatarsal. Hello, tibia. Hello, fibula. Right back atcha,’\u00a0femoral head. Unfolding from my fetal position among the dogs and husband, today I can feel my\u00a0thoracic spine, right there at T5. The metacarpal bones\u00a0of my right hand spent the fretful night reminding me that I am, in fact, right-handed. This is my … Continue reading The Lonely Donor, Part V: Preparation<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-marrowdonation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1756"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1825,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions\/1825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}