and so it all begins...

Today was the first day of Gil's stem cell harvest.  Though he didn't have any young stem cells in his blood there appears to be enough "adult" stem cells for at least one transplant.  The doc says at Gil's age that that's probably all that he would use anyway.  Hey, one transplant sounds great.

The harvesting is quite a process.  They hook him up intravenously in both arms. One arm's blood goes out into a machine where it's put through a centrifuge, separated into red and white blood cells, plasma and stem cells.  The stem cells are extracted and the rest goes back through the other arm's IV. And so on for 3 1/2 hours.

We go back tomorrow for another go at it.  We just got word that he got 3/4ths of what he'll need from today's "taking his blood out for a spin".  We'll see what we harvest tomorrow!

It's starting!!

Life is good.

We have a grand daughter! who came into the world very smoothly (thanks to her gifted mom's healthy body) and is now the center of our universe:  Piper Rose Hirsch born 7/12/09 at 5:33 pm in NYC.

Everything else is just details.

But finally we have details.  Gil had his pre bone marrow transplant  (BMT) physical today and we have a plan.  with dates.  I am grateful!.

So far his numbers look good and baring any surprises the plan is:

on Saturday 7/25 I will start giving him 4 days of twice daily sub cutaneous shots of a stem cell stimulating drug (they thought it was better that I do it than trying to find a clinic to give it to him on the weekend).

On Tuesday 7/28 after his am shot, he'll have labs drawn and if he appears to have enough stem cells, they'll start harvesting.  It may take two days to get enough cells.

Then, on August 1st, we'll take off for NYC to meet Piper Rose in person.

Gil's transplant will, hopefully, begin soon after our return on August 4th.  But transplant positions are given based on need, and the down side of Gil's "good numbers" is he may get bumped; the up side is that hopefully he'll be resilient enough to make enough of a recovery that I'll be able to fly out in the beginning of October  and be the first month+ of child care when Kate has to go back to work.  I won't leave him without 8+ weeks into the transplant and plenty of loving folks supporting him.

So them's the details.

The garden is blossoming and being fruitful.

We start butchering chickens this weekend (90 to do)

Our new solar photo voltaic tracker has covered our electricity plus about $35 this first month.

We are blessed with good friends

Gil and a friend and I (with major support by Gil's John Deere tractor) just replaced our front walkway with  large flat stones which should be easier to keep clean  this winter.

So,  Life is Good.