Day 0...finally!! and creamed corn??

Finally!  Around 11:00 this morning Reid began receiving his stem cells back.   There were three bags that had to be infused and that's the first bag hanging all the way to the right in this picture.  It took a little over an hour and initially he was sick, but the nurse gave him something for nausea and then he pretty much slept through the whole thing and the rest of the day.  They've been giving him Benadryl anyway because he's had a reaction to one of the chemo drugs and has broken out in a rash.

The nurse stayed with him the entire time.  A nursing student observed.  Needless to say, Reid did not feel like posing for a picture, so you won't be seeing him today.

                                        

The whole thing was very interesting.  The stem cells arrived from the lab frozen in a thing that kind of looked like a cooler inside this white box.  Here he is getting ready to remove one of the bags.  (I'm sorry...I didn't get his name, but he was very nice about explaining everything to me and answering my 1001 questions.)

He thawed the bags as the stem cells were needed.  Here's one of the frozen bags sitting on the counter.  It came in the flat metal box that you can see in the picture and I assume it was to protect the bag from being damaged.  I understood him to say that they're hung by number inside a cryo...something, but we'll just call it a fancy refrigerator here.  Sorry, I'm no scientist.

He placed the bag of frozen stem cells inside what looked like a large Zip Lock bag and then placed them in water to thaw.  I think he told me the water was body temperature, but would drop a few degrees while he turned the bag around and the stem cells thawed.  It probably only took five minutes or less to thaw each bag.

With the third bag he had to take a couple of samples of the thawed stem cells so they could determine how many died during the freezing process.  It's normal for some to die off and I guess they want to have a pretty good idea of exactly how many good cells were infused.

And that was it.  The whole thing was finished in a little over an hour.

Then the entire room smelled like creamed corn.  Even though we were wearing masks we could still smell it.  The preservative that's added to the stem cells causes a smell like creamed corn that Reid's body puts out through his skin.  We were told ahead of time to expect it, and they weren't kidding.

Now it's in God's hands.

And while all of this was going on the nurse came into the room and said, "He's gotten a bunch of cards today," and handed me a stack of envelopes.  Thanks to Jenny over at Jenny Matlock..."off on my tangent" people are sending him cards after she wrote about him on her blog.  He'll have mail to open when he's feeling a little better tomorrow.  Thanks to Jenny and everyone else who read her blog post and responded.

All the caring, concern, and prayers are greatly appreciated.