Tomorrow is Admit Day

Tom at the Sacramento Zoo 03/14/13

 

 

Tomorrow Tom is due at the hospital for 7:30am where he'll get his new portocath put in which will be a tri-lumen implanted in his chest like his port is and will be used for the transplant and then any further infusions necessary.  It will stay with him for 3 months so chances are that he will have the PICC line removed possibly upon discharge of this stay since he will have the new thing as well as his port which they can access on the daily. 

 

He is scheduled to receive chemotherapy every six hours for six days to wipe out his marrow in order to have it cleared for the new guy's marrow stem cells. The donor will be going to his place of "harvesting" on Saturday and I believe Sunday to donate the stem cells.  From there they will go to a cryo center to be processed and will be considered "fresh" when received next Friday and infused Friday afternoon (March 22nd). So to recap, chemo tomorrow-wednesday of next week, a "breather" day on Thursday, and then the transplant will take place on Friday.

 

While the actual "transplant" is simply a hanging of a bag of blood stem cells to be infused in less than an hour, the complications that can be associated with transplantation are rather serious.  Without getting into too much detail, it's rather frightening and has Tom extremely nervous (understandably).  Any words of encouragement are of course welcome.  If you find yourself in the Sacramento area this weekend, please stop by! The hospital is located right off of the Business 80 loop it's Sutter General Hospital and he will be on the 4th floor in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit.

 

Tom has found a way to watch the Giants game on Saturday (after the doctor of course told him he could not in fact delay treatment to watch a rugby game on televison haha), so many thanks to the Hayles Family! If you would like to skype, our skype account is: laura.mahutga please send me a "friend request" and we'd love to chat if he's feeling well :) 

 

Today we went to the Sacramento Zoo as sort of a last hurrah before he's hospital and then house bound for months. It was much smaller than my nine year old self remembers, but it was just perfect for Tom who's back was aching and new meds were kicking in and causing drowsiness.

 

Thank you again to everyone for being so wonderfully supportive for us during this time! We greatly appreciate it.  Did you know you can also leave comments on the blog? I highly welcome them as means of encouragement or messages for Tom during the next few weeks.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

 

Lots of Love!

-Laura

 

ps. if you require our new address please let me know and I'll be sure to give it to you :)