We are counting down to the transplant day and today is “Day -11”. Yesterday I received the green light to start treatment. Today we start with a block of 4 days that are identical: a prednisone infusion in the morning and then 2 stem cell stimulation injections per day in the evening and at night (at 11 p.m. and 3 p.m.). These G-CSF injections must ensure that your immune system will produce millions of extra stem cells so that they can be ‘harvested’ in 4 days from my own bloodstream. This may be accompanied by bone pain in the coming days because your bone tissue will sort of ‘open up’ so that those millions of stem cells ‘burst’ out of your bone tissue and end up in the bloodstream, to be harvested from your own blood with a sort of dialysis device.
After some sightseeing in the last few days, I feel pretty good today, apart from the fatigue. So at the end of the afternoon Simon and I went ‘just’ to the market near the hotel for a souvenir. The prednisone infusion is in the morning and the injections only late in the evening, so in the afternoon there is some possibility of leaving the hospital (if you still feel comfortable with that of course). Also in the evenings, I am able to have dinner together with Simon.
So… I guess I’ll just go out in the afternoons while it is still possible. 🙂 I knew that this Izmailovo Market was there and would be beautiful and had saved it for when I could only do something for a short time period. But seriously… I can’t believe what we found there! Again so many pictures taken… just beautiful.
Update after the first injection of 23 o’clock: the nurse placed the injection in my upper arm and she is less than 2 minutes away and I already start to get chattering teeth and flu-like symptoms. Scary as hell, because the effect caught me by surprise. Paracetamol did wonders and the nurse gave me a sleeping pill.
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