July 18th Sunday- Stem Cell Day

On Sunday 18th she was given her first re-infusion of stem cells. That was a very anticlimatical event; there were seven different nurses and technicians in our room, they did full vital signs on her every 3 minutes... the infusion lasted a whopping 6 minutes and she slept through it! Blip-we’re done. WHAT!?! It took two days and over 12 hours to harvest these cells and that’s what it comes to!?! She will get two more infusions, but really after all we went through to get these things!

Then came the smell...oh the smell, it affects different people differently, some don’t even smell it, some can’t walk into the room without turning green... everyone has their own description of it... Some say it smells like bad fish, to our doctor cooked asparagus; to me it smelled like creamed corn. I could smell it right away on her breath, the anticoagulant that they use to help preserve the stem cells while they are frozen. A few hours later and I was one of the lucky ones turning green... please don’t ever ask me to eat creamed corn again. Luckily for me it was Robs turn to spend the night that night and by the next night it was not so potent smelling. The next couple of days were spent hanging out in the hospital, Charlotte was hooked up for hydration most of the time but we did get off of isolation so we were able to take some wagon rides around the nurses’ station again.