Family Day:

Advice for Husbands

If your wife tends to think that your sense of humor is a little lame to start with - don’t expect her to think that you are a whole lot funnier after:

A) she has been cooped up in a hospital room being treated to a steady diet of chemo drugs, steroids, anti-nausea agents, narcotics and immunosuppressant medications

and

B) you are her primary source of “entertainment” for a prolonged period of time

I am tending to blame Sara’s lack of appreciation for my sense of humor over the past few days on all of the medications she is receiving - but Erin and Ali have graciously pointed out that they also think that my humor is lame - and they aren’t taking any medications.

My Advice – have sons!

Sara’s Progress

Sara’s condition is progressing as expected. The next couple of weeks will likely be the roughest part of the treatment to date. She will experience the combined side effects of the radiation and chemo drugs and her blood counts will drop significantly before the new stem cells can establish themselves. The negative side effects will continue over the next 2 weeks before her blood counts start to recover. There is going to be a lot of ‘waiting and seeing’ in the next few months. Graft vs Host disease will likely start to develop to some degree after her counts start to return. It is around the three month post transplant point that she will have another bone marrow aspirate done to reexamine the new marrow and determine the success of the transplant in eliminating the production of cancerous cells.

Eating is not an activity that is going to have much appeal for a while and the laps around the hallways of Unit 57, which she has been doing regularly, will likely be a little slower and less frequent.

This part of the program isn’t exactly a picnic but Sara considers herself fortunate to have the opportunity to undertake this transplant therapy because in most parts of the world it isn’t even available. Without it, the probability for long term success in treating this type of leukemia is limited.

One of the factors that make this treatment possible is the availability of blood products and transfusions to support Sara, and others like her, during the critical period when they are not producing enough blood cells to sustain themselves independently. Sara has begun receiving transfusions to replace the platelets that have been destroyed by this last round of chemo.

With that in mind, Joy ( seen below volunteering with Erin at Nov. blood donor clinic) has put together the following information regarding opportunities to help ensure that blood is in good supply, whether it is required for use in leukemia patients, motor vehicle accident victims or friends and neighbors requiring a host of other medical treatments.

Blood donor clinic Feb. 20

Did you know that Canadians can give blood every 56 days?

Did you know that one of every two Canadians is eligible to give blood?

People Who Love Sara helped pack a blood donor clinic in north-west Calgary back in November.

Those people are eligible to give again at a Canadian Blood Services clinic to be held this Saturday, Feb. 20 at Foothills Alliance Church, 333 Edgepark Boulevard, N.W.

While the clinic can accommodate some walk-in donors, organizers prefer donations-by-appointment.

To make an appointment, please call 1-888- 2-Donate.

If that clinic doesn’t work for you, check out the Canadian Blood Services website at www.blood.ca.

Click on “CLINICS”, enter your address and a time frame when you could give and you will find a list of clinics planned for Calgary.

Other dates and places include:

Feb. 25 – G. Diefenbaker High School

March 4 – Deerfoot S Atrium

March 11 – SAIT

March 13 – Cardel Place

These are clinics planned for the northwest. Others are held throughout Calgary EVERY DAY.

Thanks for your e-mails, thoughts and prayers.

Kevin

Birthday Week

Monday, Feb 8th, we packed up a "Birthday Picnic", complete with cake, that had been generously prepared and delivered to our house by friends, and celebrated Alison's 14th birthday in Sara's hospital room.

The Nurses on Unit 57 refer to the date of a patient's Stem Cell Transplant as their "New Birthday".
We will be marking Feb 10th on our calendars as "Sara's New Birthday". I suspect that I might have to bake a couple of birthday cakes around this time next year as neither Ali nor Sara are very good at sharing cake!

The transplant went well. The transplant nurses commented that the bag of
donor cells was large and the lab report indicated that the concentration of stem cells in the sample was high.

We are not given any information about the donor's country of residence but the nurses speculate that because the cells arrived late they likely travelled a long distance -

probably from somewhere in Europe.

The transplant took place a day later than originally planned but Ali decided that it was worth the wait since Sara's donor had supplied a big,"chubby" bag of cells rather

than a skinny, little, low concentration donation.

The donor stem cells were transfused into Sara's bloodstream and will circulate throughout her body eventually migrating to her bone marrow where they will take over the function of her old stem cells which were destroyed by the chemo and radiation. ( I'm probably not going to make any points by referring to her stem

cells as "old" - so substitute "original" in that last statement )

The next couple of weeks will be spent managing the side effects of the chemo, steroids and immunosuppressant medications and controlling infection until the new stem cells can establish themselves and start differentiating into the variety of blood cells that Sara will require to re-establish healthy circulatory and immune systems.

Her spirits are good and despite being heavily medicated she was up doing laps around the unit an hour after the transplant.

The Olympics may provide a bit of a distraction to help pass the time during Sara's recovery phase. We will watch to see if she has any sudden urges to cheer

for Sweden or Germany that might give us a hint as to where her new stem cells came from!

Greetings from Unit 57

Today was a busy day for Sara.

I chronicled the days' events on our laptop at the hospital - twice.

Without my trusty sidekicks, Erin and Ali to help me transfer the text to the blog I have managed to lose both accounts of the festivities somewhere in the bowels of my computer or out there in cyberspace.

So here is the late night Coles Notes version:

- Sara tolerated the Total Body Irradiation that she received today very well

-the Stem Cell Transplant was scheduled for Feb 9th

-we were advised today that harvesting an adequate quantity of stem cells from the donor and making flight courier connections was taking a little longer than anticipated so the cells are not scheduled to arrive in Calgary until around 11:00 PM Feb 9th

-once the cells arrive they need to be prepared for transplant

-therefore, the actual transplant will not be undertaken until

the morning of Feb 10th

Sara is managing the side effects of the treatments well and is resting relatively comfortably.

She will continue receiving steroids, immunosuppressants and anti nausea medications throughout the day tomorrow in preparation for the transplant Feb 10th

We will provide you with a little more comprehensive update if the girls can retrieve it from wherever I sent it to !?!

Thanks for all of the e-mails expressing support for Sara and the rest of the family

Yours, forever technologically challenged

Kevin

(I included this photo to see if anyone was actually reading the text or just looking at the pictures - Sara in Morocco May 2008 )

Adventures In Chemo

Just a quick note to let folks know what is up with Sara this week.

To this point she has completed four

consecutive days of chemotherapy and has tolerated the treatment very well. She has spent some long days at the hospital but has been able to come home overnight and return to the hospital in the morning.

Tomorrow she will commence therapy with a couple of medications that have the potential to create side effects requiring closer monitoring. She will stay in hospital overnight tomorrow and remain there for the next few weeks.

She is progressing well and the treatment timeline is going according to schedule.

We appreciate all of the good wishes and positive thoughts that have been directed our way.

" The glass is half full - and the chemo is half empty ! "