Happy Birthday Jared!!!!

 In case you are confused, today is not Jared’s actual birthday, the day he was born. Today is his new extra special birthday, November 13^th, which will be a new day that we get to celebrate for the rest of our lives. Today is Jared’s Stem Cell Transplant day. He is having his auto-transplant and all the stem cells that he had collected a few months ago are being put back into his body. They call this his birthday because the chemo he has been given destroys all of his bone marrow and then they give him back his cells and new baby bone marrow grows back. His body is starting fresh like he is a new little baby. Over the next year he will get all the basic vaccines that you get when you are a baby. So today is a happy day!

We arrived at SCCA in the dark early this morning and Jared had a normal blood draw and then we headed to have him set up to get his transplant. This consists of several hours of hydration before then the transplant then five more hours of hydration after. Jared was extremely nauseous all morning. It is so hard to watch him be so uncomfortable, but he was a champ and suffered through the pain. Around 11:30am a lab blood specialist came into Jared’s room with his stem cells. When they collected his stem cells several months ago they froze them. She brought them into the room frozen with a large machine/bath and she defrosted them right in front of us. Before she arrived Jared’s nurse Kelly gave him several super strong nausea medications through IV as well as painkillers. The actual process of the transplant is fairly simple. They hook the bag of stem cells up and they slowly drip back into Jared. One very common problem that people experience during this process is a reaction to the chemicals that the stem cell’s are frozen and preserved in. The reactions that occur are severe nausea as the transplant is happening, the chemical is one that overwhelms the senses and so they tell you to bring a big orange with you to transplant, they have you peel and rip it up and have the patient sniff the orange. This is supposed to work because oranges have such a strong sent that if they sniff it, it will compete with the chemical for the attention of your senses and you will not notice the effects of the chemical on your body. The chemical makes your throat have that terrible overwhelming sensation you have in your throat right before you throw up( Everyone should know what  I’m talking about! It has to be my least favorite feeling ever!) Jared was very good about sniffing his orange, and he tried to fight back that terrible sensation. He made it all the way through the transplant before he started vomiting.

Jared smelling the orange. Half way through he picked up a piece and put it on his face.....

 Getting the transplant ready!

After the transplant was over Jared was able to sleep for several hours while he got five hours of hydration. Jared has not had a huge appetite under the circumstances, but he is now home and feeling ok.

Several people have asked me how long Jared will be in the hospital after transplant? Or how long till he is better? It is all kind of confusing but I am going to try to explain it. When people have stem cell transplants now a days they do not keep you in the hospital directly after your transplant. When people have the regiment of Chemotherapy that Jared had they know that after a certain number of days your counts will drop to zero. How many days till this happen depends on the person. When your counts drop to zero you are extremely prone to infection because you have no immune system. Instead of keeping you in the hospital as soon as you have your transplant they let you go home and be comfortable until you are so sick you have to be in the hospital. So, everyday from here on we go to the doctors and they take a blood sample and look at his counts and we talk to the doctor. Jared will go into the hospital for on average a week or two, but the exact day is unsure. Here are some reasons why he would go in…..If he can not stop vomiting, if he has a temperature over 100 degrees, if he gets mucosidus, if he can no longer swallow his pills, and if he is in extreme pain. These are things that will most likely happen to Jared at some point most likely in the next week and then he will be admitted. When will Jared feel better? That is also very unknown, today transplant day is what they call day zero and each day after counts up from zero. They expect most people to be on the up and up with their counts coming up from zero around day 10 to 13. They also expect Jared to leave the transplant team and go back to his normal doctor around the 12^th of December. How good he will feel is so unknown, and these dates I stated before are just guesses. Everything in this process is a guess, or an estimate it is scary when you are the kind of person that hears an idea and literally could etch it into a stone if I could! I am trusting in the doctors, they are wonderful and so smart  but mostly we are trusting in god. Jared is such an amazing talented guy and he has such an exciting life ahead of him. I have so much faith that he is going to recover fast and live a long healthy life.

Thank you for your prayers! Today was a very scary and unknown day, but we were so blessed with phone calls, tons of texts, and emails. We are so grateful for all of our family members and friends for their love and support as we try to conquer this disease! Day zero is almost over and it’s all uphill from here! 

Jared's mom brought us treats! Cake Pop!