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!!