Transplant Plans

After a long commute battling early morning rush hour traffic, we arrived at Children’s where Kevin’s nurse was waiting for him. Her note on the board above his bed said “your ‘cute’ nurse Peggy”. She has been Kevin’s nurse from the beginning of this journey and will continue to be his primary for his in-patient treatments. She is about my age (very youthful!) and definitely not “cute” in the literal sense—however the description of that word seems to become more compassionate the older we get. She has a warped sense of humor and can throw the bull back to Kevin as fast as he can throw at her, which is just what he needs.

Dr. Bendel had a long discussion with all of us regarding the future transplant. We need to decide on the facility before Kevin has his stem cell harvesting, and that will be within 2-4 days after this chemo round. So this Friday, we will be checking out both the University and Abbott transplant units and meeting with the transplant oncologists at both facilities. Now this is no small feat, since Kevin will still be hooked up to his toxic waste which runs for 24 hours/day for 5 days. So some ingenious troubleshooting needed to be accomplished.

The first thought was to allow Kevin to take the chemo with him on the CAD pump and duffle bag like he did the last flushes when he came home from the first chemo round. This was ruled out because of the high liability the hospital would be under if the pumps malfunctioned and/or a chemo drug leak occurred because of the toxicity. This really is nasty stuff, and a spill would be a major catastrophe. So we went to plan B. They will speed up the delivery rate of the chemo before and after our excursion to the University allowing Kevin to be unhooked for up to 3 hours in the morning. Hopefully this will work. Since the goal when pumping in this poison is to minimize as much as possible the damage to the rest of the body, they are limited as to how fast they can deliver it. Since Abbott and Children’s are connected, Kevin would only have to be unhooked for an hour later in the afternoon while we take him through the tunnel to visit Abbott’s transplant unit. Hopefully Kevin won’t be battling major nausea, since this will be the 4th day of his round, and will be able to tolerate all of this. Otherwise we go to plan C which no one has come up with yet!