Surgery

Monday, August 29; we arrived in Tuscon early morning at 6am. We had to wait for a while before she had her pheresis catheter put in. We were debating on if they could do the surgery or not. A pheresis catheter is the largest and stiffest catheter. They need this to do her stem cell harvest. She will have to be under general anesthesia and we were worried, because she doesn't do well with sedation. They had to do various blood tests before the placement of the central line, which is going to be a double lumin (where two tubes are put in through her jugular vein to a major vein into her heart, which is the actual size of her vein). They will have to permenently tie off her vein, to prevent a stroke and fluid going to her brain. After surgury, Dr. Graham will do a bone marrow aspirate, where they take a sample of her bone marrow to study if there are any blasts in her marrow. They also did another spinal tap/intrathecal chemo of ara-c. These procedures were all done under anesthesia and everything was successfull and she recovered nicely. They started her on neupogen drug, where I will contine at home until Friday. Now I have 3 central lines to flush, clean and change dressings every day!