Second Harvest

Tuesday is the second day of collection. We don't really know what to expect.

A doctor comes in and tells me they collected 2.6 million cells today! That gives us a total of 3.7 million, which is well on the way to 5 million. Very exciting. Wednesday's collection seems likely to top us off at 5 million.

Also exciting is the first citing of a neutrophil. Note the use of the singular form. This corresponds to an absolute neutrophil count (ANC) of 10. I don't actually get that excited, since I remember my ANC bouncing between 0 and 50 during my hospital stay in September. But 10 is definitely not zero, and maybe tomorrow we'll see more growth.

On Wednesday morning, Mara calls me with two pieces of news. They didn't get 3.7 million cells after all, they only have 3 million. (There is a preliminary count, which was too high, and a final count.) The second piece of news is that they aren't going to collect any more. Mara's platelets have dropped by half each time, leaving her in the 40s on Wednesday morning. So they decide to stop collecting. 3 million is enough, and they don't want to harm her.

So, three million it is.