Mike and Zacc in "A Time to Harvest"

Mike here.  It's been nearly two weeks now since Zacc and I wrapped up our donating.  I wanted to share this time lapse of our last day donating stem cells.  Recap, there was one day of white blood cells and two of stem cells.

On this last day, the Nuepogen was starting to make my hip feel like I had slept walked and become a contortionist for Cirque du Soleil.  It felt more like a muscle pull than achy bones.  It had me limping everywhere and nearly going into sidewalk rage with a bikers trying to pass me - they really shouldn't be there, right?  Zacc was probably having side effects too but we know his pain tolerance is a bit excessive / strange.  Did you hear he laughed as they did the marrow biopsy on him to make sure he could donate a few weeks ago?  He also opens beer bottles with his teeth, which I tried years ago and only recently did the grooves in my teeth go away.

 

This is Carolaan's favorite part when the first stem cells hit the bag almost like an explosion.  Wait for it.

Carolaan was my nurse and Abbie was Zacc's.  Tammy kept a watchful eye on both of us.  Inevitably with male siblings it turned into a race.  The nurses reassured us this was about quality but being men we knew it was really about quantity.  Residents were making rounds, and we explained we were just trying to see who had the "biggest donation."  Happy to say that made even the shiest future doctors laugh.  Did you know that Nuepogen also has the side effect of making bad jokes?

It's pretty cool seeing 8 hours condensed to a little over a minute.  Zacc and I had pretty well become one by this last day.  You'll see we read (my book was 1/10th the size of his), slept, and even relieved ourselves at pretty much the same time.  Lesson learned, don't wear boxers with a button fly when you only have one arm; and yes, this time the camel couldn't hold it.  We even blew veins together.  Zacc's went first.  Our super staff quickly shut down his machine and stuck him again.  As I was thinking there really should be a euphemism for "blown vein," I started feeling a pressure building in my arm too.  So, after they found a fresh vein with Zacc they did the same with me.  My favorite part is watching the stem cells slowly collect in both our bags.  In keeping with my food analogies to blood products, I'd say donated stem cells look like Campbell's Tomato Soup

After a long day of donating and over a week of being dry, we were happy to get back to abusing our livers in ways they were used to.

With our donation day done, I tried walking without the limp but just ended up looking like I took walking lessons from John Travolta circa 1977.  So, Mom found out the hip was acting up, but it would go away once the Nuepogen injections stopped.  We went up and saw Dad with Mom but soon it was time for trains, taxis, and buses to call our names.  Before leaving, we went out to dinner with Mom at a nearby bar.  It sounds like those bags of stem cells are doing the trick for dad and we look forward to his numbers continuing to climb.