{"id":1823,"date":"2014-09-23T06:47:44","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/?p=1823"},"modified":"2014-10-14T07:02:55","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T14:02:55","slug":"the-lonely-donor-part-6-donation-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patandstacy.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/23\/the-lonely-donor-part-6-donation-day\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lonely Donor, Part VI: Donation Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Me<\/a>
Me and my machine. Yes, I have a bottom lip. Yes, I’m on narcotics.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He is alive, and so am I.<\/p>\n

And never I have felt so alive: Lying in a\u00a0hospital bed,\u00a0the apheresis\u00a0machine sucking stem cells from my veins\u00a0for the better part of a workday.\u00a06 hours, 10 minutes to be exact.<\/p>\n

I reported for duty at Mayo Clinic Hospital at 7:15 AM in my favorite, long-sleeved dress-pajamas\u00a0with my lucky\u00a0New Orleans Saints Super Bowl Champions T-shirt underneath. They needed ready access to my veins, and I needed a good omen… or three.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0when luck is not enough, there’s always narcotics. Because the entire\u00a0volume of my blood would be filtered\u00a0FIVE TIMES<\/strong>, and because the staff had encouraged me to take one of my precious oxycodone pills to ease my transition onto the machine, I gleefully obliged.<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a><\/p>\n

After my final two (of 10) filgrastim sticks that morning, Nurse Heather was the leader in the clubhouse on Stacy’s Blue Ribbon Needle-Sticker Championships<\/a>\u00a0(10 sticks = lots of opportunities for misery). Heather\u00a0promptly\u00a0relinquished her crown to first-runner up Nurse Charles just 10\u00a0minutes later, when she put the in-bound 18-gauge IV line in my right arm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
If you’re squeamish about needles or blood, you might be reading the wrong blog post.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More blood-testing ensued. We had an hour to wait before I was cleared for the machine, so Patrick and I popped downstairs (IN MY PAJAMAS!) to the Mayo Clinic Cafeteria for some (cheap) early-morning deliciousness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Knowing I needed to stay on track with my magnesium-potassium-and-calcium-loading, I opted for frozen yogurt (206 mg Ca) with sprinkles (0 mg Mg) and a banana (422 mg K). I was just about to pull the tap on the Italian roast coffee when Pat said, “Are you sure you want to do that?”<\/p>\n

Oh, yeah… that<\/em>. It was my No. 1\u00a0question when I found out how this whole procedure was going down: What if I have to go to the bathroom?<\/p>\n

Would I have a (gulp) foley catheter? Should I rock\u00a0one of those adult diapers, like the astronauts?<\/a><\/p>\n

“No,” Nurse Heather had\u00a0said. “You’ll have a bedside commode or a bedpan. We will help you, if you have to go<\/em>, but we have to keep your\u00a0left arm immobilized. We don’t want to dislodge the line… So you want to be pre-hydrated to help with blood flow, but you don’t want to drink a lot the morning of\u00a0the procedure.”<\/p>\n

My No. 2 question wasn’t pertinent because of the aforementioned oxycodone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We returned from breakfast to get down to business, and I took care of business one last time in a\u00a0standard\u00a0American Standard flush-toilet.\u00a0I climbed into the bed. Pat set up my electronics. Nurse Heather slapped some science on us:<\/p>\n

Everything you’ve heard about stem cells are true<\/a>: They are the badass motherfuckers of the cellular universe. Some blood-cancer patients can even donate stem cells\u00a0to\u00a0<\/strong>themselves\u00a0because stem cells can survive chemotherapy<\/em><\/strong>. My Type A- goodness\u00a0would be sucked into the apheresis machine. The stem cells would be filtered from my blood via osmosis; bagged-tagged-and-relocated to the waiting recipient; and infused into him through a\u00a0simple\u00a0IV procedure.<\/p>\n

“And they’re just like little homing pigeons,” Nurse Heather explained. “They know exactly where to go. They just return to the bones and start making marrow. It’s really remarkable.”<\/p>\n

Your average stem cell donor will produce about 10 stem cells per drop of blood.\u00a0I produce 134.4 stem cells per drop.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now, I may struggle to\u00a0finish in the top 95% of the Athena division of a sprint\u00a0triathlon<\/a>,\u00a0and I know I have trouble completing\u00a0sentences without offending a blast radius of bystanders<\/a>,\u00a0but I have one talent that can save lives:\u00a0I produce stem cells like a champ<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

134.4 stem cells per drop of me… but once my blood\u00a0left my left arm, the stem cells therein\u00a0belonged to him<\/strong><\/em>. Legally. My filtered\u00a0blood would then be returned through that pesky 18-gauge line in my right arm to go about its business of being offered up to the highest bidder among a coterie of job applicants and competitive cyclists.<\/p>\n

Nurse Heather inserted the other, outbound, 18-gauge stainless steel line in the pit\u00a0of my left elbow. We\u00a0adjusted the pillows in infinitesimal increments so I wouldn’t be nagged by the ache of sustained stillness. She strapped a blood pressure cuff to my left biceps to keep mild pressure on that arm … and strapped another one to my left calf to monitor my actual blood pressure (which was shockingly painful when it inflated.)<\/p>\n

My blood volume is about 4.4 liters. The patient\u00a0weighs about 8 kilos more than I. Based on the small difference between us (another reason to be an Athena!), they needed 5 million stem cells from me. And no, after I got off the machine, sans 5 million stem cells, I did not weigh any less. WHERE IS THE JUSTICE IN THAT?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Using some simple math, Nurse Heather determined\u00a0I’d be on the machine about 5 hours.<\/p>\n

EXCEPT THAT MY ARTERIAL INFRASTRUCTURE\u00a0DOES NOT LIKE MATH.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lines attached. All systems go.\u00a0At 10:37 AM, she turned the nob on Old Betty the Apheresis Machine, and my veins started to spasm.<\/p>\n

\"Saving<\/a>
Saving lives is sexy business. Yeah, baby.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since few of you have ever probably experienced a “vein spasm,” it was a lot like having the chills FROM THE INSIDE<\/em> OF MY ARM<\/strong>. Fits of trembling, rocketing from my elbow up\u00a0to my shoulder. Nurse Heather put hot\u00a0compresses on to “warm up” my veins, but they were having none\u00a0of it. They raged against that machine.<\/p>\n

She turned down the extraction rate. The arteries\u00a0assented. She did some more math.<\/p>\n

“Get comfortable. We’re going to be here awhile. We’ll try to turn this up as your body gets used to it, but this is the rate\u00a0your body\u00a0will allow.”<\/p>\n

It would be a long day.<\/p>\n

\"Outbound...<\/a>
Outbound… bye-bye, stem cells! Yeah, that’s a big-assed line.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fortunately Mayo Clinic allowed visitors – both in person and online.\u00a0Coinciding with my filgrastim shots, Candice sent me a daily poem. Emily Dickinson, she is not, but her text verses put a smile on my face as I rode the elevator for each of my appointed shots.\u00a0Her prayers – and those of so many others – carried me like a raft above a torrent of worry.<\/p>\n

Pat texted my tribe to keep them in the\u00a0arterial loop. He also went about documenting the adventure on film… err, pixel?\u00a0Another friend Laurie, a Mayo employee, popped by with some delicious chocolate chip cookies. Troy, a cancer survivor himself,\u00a0came by to visit and entertain his beloved\u00a0“Troyfriend.” (That would be Pat, his BFF).<\/p>\n

My constant companion, Heather monitored the rhythms of my body, gently advancing the march of the machine.<\/p>\n

“Is there a hum in here?” I asked Troy and Pat. They looked at me like I was on heavy duty narcotics… and I was!<\/p>\n

“What do you mean\u00a0by\u00a0a hum?” Heather\u00a0asked.<\/p>\n

“Like a vibration… like you pushed the bed next to the machine.”<\/p>\n

“Where do you feel this vibration?” Heather asked, pulling a long syringe out from her tray of goodness.<\/p>\n

“In the roof of my mouth.”<\/p>\n

In addition to separating the peripheral blood stem cells from the rest of my A- awesomeness, the machine strips calcium from the bloodstream – hence my pre-donation diet<\/a>. She moved the syringe to my inbound line.<\/p>\n

\"Nurse<\/a>
Nurse Heather’s tray of magic tricks. All this is for me!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“What you’re feeling is a lack of calcium, which we are going to fix right now… You may feel a warm sensation, like you’ve wet your pants,” she explained as she slowly depressed the plunger. “But I’m not going to let you wet your pants.”<\/p>\n

“Oh my God, I feel like I just wet my pants!” I shrieked, peeking under my sheet. The blue polka-dotted pajamas remained unsoiled. Pat and Troy doubled over with laughter. The vibration disappeared. Heather, for the win!<\/p>\n

Pat left to prepare the house for my triumphant return (We live only 10 minutes from Mayo Hospital). Reveling in the freedom of retirement, my friend Bob swung\u00a0by for a visit. With no place to go – and no way to speed up my timeline on getting there – I enjoyed almost one full hour of his time.<\/p>\n

When was the last time you visited with a friend without distractions, without deadlines, without the machinations of eating to disrupt the\u00a0conversation? It is a lost luxury in this day of electronic tethers. Bob and I talked about travel and art and cooking, his grandkids, the machine, my donation, his encore career as an animal activist… and then he had to step into the hallway to make\u00a0a call for his next appointment… and I had to go to the bathroom (since I\u00a0had not previously wet my pants and I’d already been on the machine for two-and-a-half hours).<\/p>\n

I\u00a0looked at Nurse Heather.<\/p>\n

“I think when Bob leaves, I might have to go to the bathroom,” I whispered.<\/p>\n

“Really?” Her eyes bored into my soul. “Do you really<\/strong><\/em> have to go?”<\/p>\n

“Well, uh, after Bob leaves… I mean, I wouldn’t want to make him uncomfortable… but after he leaves… in a half hour or so… then, yeah… maybe.”<\/p>\n

She nodded almost imperceptibly.<\/p>\n

Bob wrapped up his call. We talked more… about concerts and Arkansas and friends long departed. We bid our goodbyes. He slipped away. Heather had disappeared, and another nurse had relieved her.<\/p>\n

I shrugged (right shoulder only) – I didn’t know how I felt about relieving\u00a0myself with\u00a0a new nurse, so I played Words With Friends on my iPhone:\u00a0ZARF is a word, who knew? Narcotics for the triple-word win!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Pantone strip shows the color \/ concentration they wanted to achieve as they spun out my<\/del> his<\/strong> stem cells. This is not a technical explanation… but it’s cool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the suggestion of my friend Mary, who had been undergoing radiation treatment for breast cancer, I tried the Deepak Chopra \/ Oprah meditation<\/a>: Om-ing in time with the hum of my machine. I thought about my patient, somewhere in the United States in a similar hospital setting – the yin to my yang. When your every bodily function is being monitored and your own bloodflow is being guided by a machine, being present and mindful is a gift.<\/p>\n

The narcotics helped, too.<\/p>\n

Moments later, when\u00a0Heather returned from her lunch break, I’d already meditated myself into a fitful state of airplane sleep.<\/p>\n

“If I stare at her long enough, maybe she will wake up…”<\/p>\n

It was Robin – the donor coordinator at Mayo<\/a>! (And yes, if you do stare at me long enough, I will wake up. Just ask my dogs… or my husband). Robin had held my hand through a frustrating week of pre-donation testing, follow-up tests, an inordinate number of pregnancy tests, a last-minute postponement and quick-turnaround rescheduling.\u00a0My heart jumped to see her – and the machine didn’t seem to mind.<\/p>\n

“How are you feeling?”<\/p>\n

“Good, good… Pretty comfortable. Can’t complain. I haven’t had to go to the bathroom yet… but I think I might have to in a little while.”<\/p>\n

“Really?” Heather interjected. “Do you really<\/em><\/strong> have to go?”<\/p>\n

“Well, not exactly right now… maybe when Robin leaves… but not right now.”<\/p>\n

“Really?”<\/p>\n