Living with Multiple Myeloma

Back home after a week in NYC having a catheter put in my chest + a week of stem cell harvesting.  Unfortunately the stem cell harvest was not as successful as the doctor had hoped as I could only harvest approximately 5 million stem cells (measured per kilos of body weight), instead of the 10m desired.  The first day, I harvested approx 2.68 million stem cells, 1.68 m on day 2 and 1.21m on day three.  I had a different technician on day 3 who modified some parameters of the collection machine which is why I think that I had a proportionally higher collection that day (the expectation was for a more linear decrease, putting day 3's expected collection at approx 900k million cells that morning).  I must wait three weeks for my body to regenerate stem cells ("SC"), I will return on June 6 to have (hopefully) the remaining 5 million cells harvested that week.  In that case, the stem cell transplant will begin on June 15.   Each transplant requires approx 2.5 m...

I don't like hackneyed expressions like 'drinking from a firehose,'  but I can't stop saying it to myself.  It is how I feel.   On Monday I will have a port inserted in my chest:literally a mainline that will go straight into an artery in my chest, leaving two small chords falling on the outside of my chest: this is where they put the medicine in so that it can get into my bloodstream quickly.  It looks like I am wearing a strange modern art like medal on my chest.    The stem cell harvest will be on Tuesday,  Wednesday and Thursday of next week.  A port will be in for the duration of my transplant as well; it allows doctors to have quick access to my blood.  My phone rings constantly with calls from my doctor's office explaining different aspects of my stem cell harvest.  There is a separate professional for each of my needs;  they are polite, experienced, kind, patient and helpful.  As I was typing, a Patient to Pat...