Transplant Day

Was trying to get this started earlier. Curiousity, mostly. Good headspace. I trust these peeps. I’m in great hands! It’s my birthday thanks to my sis Jasmine “Mimi” (Bartolome) Fernstrom. Transplant is coming up. Don’t know how I’ll feel later so until then…

Catching up from yesterday…..the procedure was suppose to start at noon. Jen, my nurse gave me premeds at 11:05am and prepped me for the stem cell transplant that was to begin at noon, accompanied by Dr. Ghandi who I met the day before. The stem cells arrived and the process started shortly after. Now I’m going to explain to you what happened: So a quarter after twelve the procedure started and everything was ok. And then once the stem cells began to go into my picc line, I began to feel a hot sensation in my face and my chest. I asked them, “am I suppose to feel hot?”, and they said no, and they slowed down the transplant and at the same time gave me IV Bendryl. The stem cells were frozen for transportation and preserved with a chemical known to have reactions, this is why they pretreated me with antihistamines. My throat was irritated and felt like asthmatic symptoms. They gave me hard candies to keep my throat soothed and then the IV Benadryl kicked in. They continued to transplant the stem cells for approx an hour and a half. Once that was done, they reassured me that the allergic symptoms would go away, which they did. They monitored me by taking my vitals every 1/2 hour and then every hour until evening. During the procedure this was done every two minutes and in the middle of the night, every four hours.

For dinner, I finally had a cheeseburger and stale-ass fries and at some point after transplant was given a vanilla cupcake to celebrate my “new” birthday.

It’s hard not doing anything. Boredom is hard, making it difficult to rest.