This Machine Killed Cancer

There has been a bit of a delay on the third part of this series.  Those low levels that I mentioned in part 2 got even lower over the weekend, so yesterday I had to go into the hospital and get a blood transfusion.  They hung a bag of caramel-colored platelets on my IV, gave me some Benadryl, and I took my first brave step towards vampirism.  A life where I am dependent on the blood of others to stay alive.  My victims are mostly college-educated, NPR-listeners who love their pets.  These people have been kind enough to go to vampire-funded collection centers (The Red Cross is a big one) and just leave a pint or two.  But supplies are running low.  Don’t make us start coming to your houses.  It’s much cleaner and less painful at the Red Cross.

That’s a joke, but blood supplies are always running low.  The country goes through at least two shortages a year.  If we were in one of those shortages, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get the platelets I needed and could have bled to death the next time I nicked myself shaving.  Please take an hour every few months and go help a brother out. (Technically, I shouldn’t be able to get away with using the phrase “help a brother out”, seeing as how I am about as white as they come.  But in 2007 I was ordained so that I could officiate a wedding ceremony.  They let me choose my official title and I chose “Brother Shayne.”)

Now that I am fixed up and full of blood, we can turn our attention to the rest of the plan.  As I mentioned in the last post, mobilization and bone marrow transplant are the next two steps.  These will both be happening at UNC, as planned.  The type of transplant I’m getting is called an “autologous bone marrow transplant.”  The basic idea is that they grab some stem cells from my bone marrow and put it in the freezer (that’s the mobilization).  Then they blast me with so much chemotherapy that everything in me that rapidly divides will die.  This includes white blood cells, red blood cells, bone marrow, hair, skin, and maybe if I’m lucky the cancer too.  By that point, we’ll all be really thankful that someone stuck my bone marrow cells in the freezer because I need things like white blood cells and red blood cells and bone marrow.  So they pump that junk back into me, give me a handshake and send me on my way (that’s the bone marrow transplant).

All told, this process will take two months.  In the hospital.  And not just in the hospital, but stuck on the BMT unit with no trips to Starbucks or that place that serves a burrito in a bowl.  There might be a week or so in the middle where I get to go home, but I’ll probably just lay around saying “ow,” so it won’t be that different from being there.  I am tentatively scheduled to start this in the first few days of September, but we’re waiting on some scans and a bone marrow biopsy before we can make the final decision.

I’ll write more about the mobilization and the transplant as they’re happening, but for now the key piece of info to take away from this blog post is “two months in the hospital.”  Even though I’ve been in-patient for a full week two times a month all summer, this is going to be a whole new level of fun.  We are getting prepared like we’re going to war.  I’ve created an Amazon wish list that has some things on it that I need/want.  I know we’ve asked you to donate a lot already, and this is one of those instances where it makes perfect sense to pull from the money that has been donated.  I’m offering this list though for anyone who is just itching to give more and can’t figure out how. :)

I’m hoping I’ll be feeling well enough to keep blogging from the hospital.  Two months is a lot of time and I could get a lot written down.  There are so many pieces to our cancer story that have been skipped over because we’ve been so busy just dealing with them.  I’m looking forward to having some time to go back and look at those pieces too.

See you in November.