Day 1 Treatment begins with stem cell stimulation

Decided to separate the testing days and treatment days in the title of my posts. hope it doesn't confuse anyone. Therefore, I will be referencing day 1 as today, the day my body starts to receive the treatment it sorely needs.

And so it begins. Was able to spend the night with Alicia at the hotel again. Enjoyed another restaurant dinner at the nearby Japanese restaurant. Again we had a variety of rolls and sushi. Great food, I will take advantage of any opportunity to have a good meal away form the bland hospital food any time I can.

In the morning we were running a little late to the hospital so my morning infusion started a little late. Started at around 11:45 am with an infusion of steroids, 500 mg Solu-Medrol. This evening we will begin the stem cell stimulation injections with Neupogen also known a G-CSF. Those injections will take place around 11 pm and another one at 3 am. The purpose of these injections is to make my bone marrow mass produce stem cells and leach through my bones and into my blood stream. This process will entail 4 days of infusions and injections at which point we will harvest the stem cells from my blood. More on that when we get to that step. Picture of steroid bottle being infused, which took about 20 minutes.

As the treatment continues I will update each step so hopefully you can follow along and understand what is happening and why. For me it is easier to follow things when they are done one step at a time. That assists me in not getting so overwhelmed with information that I don't understand what is happening. Hope that helps many of you.

After the steroid injection Alicia and I were able to leave the hospital for a few hours. Hopped on the bus and then the metro and returned to the hotel to eat another pizza (do you get the idea that we like to eat out?) HAAAHAAA!! Well, we certainly like to eat good food at a reasonable price, that's for sure.

Another picture of the statue I had taken earlier. Wanted to show some scale of the statue by being a little further away. Its really quite large and the earlier picture was so close it looked a little small.

But, we did have a second motive for returning there. The subway sandwich shop is about a quarter block away from the pizza place. I picked up three sandwiches for me and two for another inmate (patient). Sarah, from the UK, is in the middle of her chemo treatment and her family has returned to the UK until she is discharged. We gladly picked up some goodies for her. On the return trip we made a detour into a grocery store and bought a few sacks of food and snacks. There was some delicious looking pastries, so we were forced (just kidding) to buy a few. Sarah was happy to receive some pastries too.

Its been several hours since I had the steroid infusion. Glad to report no adverse effects from it. Have heard that it may make people jittery, hungry, talk incessantly etc. I may exhibit some of those things as the infusion and injections continues for the next three days.

Took a photo of Alicia near a snow pile as we have been getting some flurries the last few days. She said her good bye's and left for the hotel. Tomorrow morning she will leave for the airport bright and early at 4 am. its has been so special to have her here, but she must return for work. I thank my lucky stars for the time we had here together. It sure was fun!!! We intentionally flew into Moscow a few days before my admission so that we could enjoy Moscow for a few days. I believe the photos bare out the fact that we enjoyed ourselves.

Till next time friends. Thanks for all of your prayers and support. It means more to me than I could possibly put into words.