Meet Gerd, Sigve's sister, his stem cell donor. Sigve is the youngest, and Gerd is the third youngest of 7 siblings. She is a keen knitter, and her knitting is never far from her, even in a hospital bed.
In preparation for today she has been giving herself hormone injections twice daily for a few days, to stimulate increased production of stem cells. The effect has been so formidable that her spine and knuckles have been aching with the increased activity.Gerd started the day with having an iv inserted. At first they tried to insert it into a vein on the side of the neck, but after a lot of digging and probing with no result, they had to give up and try a vein further down on the shoulder. Result: soreness and stiffness in the neck caused by some internal bleeding. Her neck will probably be blue and green for a few days.
Sigve went to visit Gerd in the harvesting room: 
The two tubes from the iv is one out and one in. Gerd's blood runs out of her, through this machine that separates the stem cells from the rest of the blood, and then back into Gerd. Her whole blood volume goes through the machine 4 times. 
This bag contains the already harvested stem cells, about half of what's needed:
Hilde Marie and I went to the café for a break:
Gerd just walked in as I am writing this, so now we wait while the stem cells are being counted to see if enough has been harvested...
1 comment:
Så kjekt med oppdatering! Må helsa te både tante Gerd og onkel Sigve :) Og ellers kjendte. Me følger med :)
Klem fra Irene
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