Day 3: Forecast - Fatigue with a chance of Mucositis

Guest blogger, Brett here.  In between a lot of sleeping today, Jessie rolled over in her hospital bed and said, “Will you update my blog?”  So here I am.  Today is Day 3.  Jessie received her transplant on Day 0.  The transplant involved two “matched” units of blood harvested from umbilical cords at noon and a unit of 300 million stem cells four hours later, which is much smaller that you would think and looks like watered down orange juice.  The actual transplant is uneventful; they just hang the units and attach them to Jessie’s intravenous Hickman line.  A nurse takes her vital signs every 15 minutes and monitors for adverse reactions.  Luckily, Jessie had none. 

This is what 300 million stem cells look like.

To avoid the awkwardness of simply staring at Jessie in her hospital bed, super friend and new Seattle local, Jen Hunter, threw a small birthday party during Jessie’s transplant to welcome the new cells.  Our parents, who are both visiting, were treated to red velvet cake, alcohol-free champagne, and birthday hats.   The doctor, who is overseeing Jessie’s clinical trial and jokingly refers to Jessie as Patient #1, came by later to witness the infusion of the stem cells.  Meanwhile, two doors down, Leukemia Celebrity and Yale Hockey player, Mandi Schwartz, received her long awaited transplant on the same day as Jessie and was written up in the New York Times.  

Flash forward to today; Jessie has fared fairly well under the circumstances.  She is at rock bottom in terms of her blood counts and is experiencing some of the typical side effects of the chemo and radiation: nausea, fatigue, and other stomach-related side effects that I will leave to your imagination.  The horrible mouth-sores, known as mucositis, haven’t come yet, but are likely inevitable.  Despite all this, Jessie has been walking the halls every morning for exercise and is keeping her spirits high.  Sometime in the next two weeks, those magic baby cells should start taking hold and producing a brand new immune system for Jessie.  Let’s hope it’s sooner than later.