Surviving cancer, Part 2
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By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
(Continued from last week.)
After I was discharged in the spring of 2007, I went back to three-month, then six-month checkups. Finally, my checkups were stretched out to one year.
In late January 2017, our dog, Fred, and I went to a client’s paper mill in Texas with the plan being to go from there to Golden, Colo. for my oldest grandson’s birthday on Feb. 4. We were there for the weekend and then planned on driving back to Atlanta on Monday and Tuesday.
Sunday night I was having some stomach pains and told my daughter on Monday morning about them. Didn’t think too much about it. It takes two days to drive from Golden, Colo. to Atlanta, requiring an overnight stay west of St. Louis, Mo. The trip went OK, but my stomach pains never went away. I was soon having night sweats, aches and just plain feeling weird.
It was time to go see Dr. Winton again. He took a look at me, ran some blood work and said he wanted me to get a PET Scan. One was scheduled about five days out while we were there in his office (since I have started down this journey, they have built the Winship Cancer Center on campus and all exams are there).
Dr. Winton, obviously a doctor with some clout, started calling around and found he could get me in the Emory Midtown Hospital to a PET Scan machine that afternoon. So, Laura and I headed to midtown. I had the scan and they told me to not leave, wait for a few minutes.
Dr. Winton’s great physician’s assistant, Jessica Neeley, came on the phone, “We just looked at the PET Scan results, don’t go home, come back here and we are going to admit you right now.” (I have Jessica and Dr. Winton on speed dial on my phone, and they answer text messages promptly, day or night.)
This time, the NHL was in my groin and belly and was growing rapidly. I was started on chemo that night, a Friday night if I remember correctly. Sunday morning, they gave me Rituximab. The pain was so great, I asked for morphine, but it took two hours for the pharmacy to dispense it. I was told later that was the effect of the Rituximab exploding the cancer cells and that I had a lot of them.
A course of treatment was discussed with me and it was decided I would go through chemo and then have, if possible, an autologous stem cell transplant. “Autologous” means they harvest your own stem cells and then hit you with massive doses of chemo, essentially killing you before returning your own stem cells to you.
Dr. Winton had to release me to the care of the Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) department. Makes no difference that Dr. Winton had done the first bone marrow transplant in Georgia, back in the 1970s, but the hospital had grown and there was now a specialized department that took over my care. Dr. Winton looked in but was basically silent.
Dr. Winton knows my case very well, of course. He also knew the procedures used in the BMT department. He was worried from the beginning that they would try to push my body too fast to produce the necessary stem cells for an autologous transplant (an autologous transplant is much preferred; one from another donor has the same rejection possibilities that any donor organ has and dictates you be on anti-rejection drugs the rest of your life).
So, I went through various rounds of chemo, targeting donating my own stem cells in early April. I needed at least 2 million of my own cells in order for this to work. To harvest your cells these days, they have a three-line port in your chest. They hook you up to a machine that is essentially a centrifuge and they spin your blood, harvesting the stem cells which have their own specific gravity, returning the rest of your blood to you. So, one line pulls out your blood, one line returns your blood to you and the third line returns those cells that were in the boundary layer, a mixture of densities.
They tried in early April for two days and failed to harvest any cells. Dr. Winton told me, “I told you so – you make new cells slowly.” They sent me home for a few weeks to rest and make my own cells. This was an emotionally draining time.
Some people can pop out 2 million cells in one day (at the time, these harvesting sessions ran about $25,000 each). On the second try, first day, I think I got about 150,000 cells. The second day, I got about 300,000 cells. Now, during this time, there was a retired nurse, Ann, who had worked at Emory for Dr. Winton who went to our church. She wanted to know how things were going every day.
So, the routine was I had to go to the harvesting center about 7 a.m. every day. This would be over about noon. Then I would go to the infusion center and get fluids, blood or whatever else I needed (I suspect I have received 50-100 units of blood over the years). At about 4 p.m., I would get a call telling me what the harvested cell count was for that day and whether I needed to come back the next day. Then I would call the sweet, retired nurse, Ann, tell her, and we would pray.
Things were not looking good. Because of the cost (and I knew they had some sort of a cost containment agreement with our insurance company), I was worried they would shut me down. I got word that the chief of the BMT department wanted to see me in the infusion center before I went home on Wednesday. I told Laura this is bad; he is going to cut me off.
I had her get me a small piece of paper (oh, I wished for graph paper) and I took my results thus far, plotted them and drew a regression line by hand. It was a fairly good job, if I have to say so myself. It showed I would make 2 million cells by Friday.
He came in and we exchanged pleasantries. Before he had a chance to deliver his news, I bombarded him with my graph. I don’t know if he was really going to cut me off, but I never gave him a chance. He wished me well.
Turned out my graph was wrong. We blew through 2 million cells on Thursday. They had me come back on Friday, but I had dropped back down to a measly 150,000. But I had enough.
The next hospital stay was planned, and it started in mid-June with more chemo. They put my cells back in me on the afternoon of June 29, 2017. It was anticlimactic. They took my bags of cells, which had been cryogenically frozen, thawed them in a pan of warm water, and fed them in me as they did everything else.
Since I was in isolation in my room, due to danger of infection, only Laura and the staff that attended me were allowed in my room. However, since what I was doing was all they do on that floor of the hospital, everyone else that works on that floor knows what is going on.
At 5 p.m., the floor staff all gathered outside my door and sang “Happy Birthday.”
Jim 2.0 was here.
(To be continued.)
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.
HCP columnist
(Continued from last week.)
After I was discharged in the spring of 2007, I went back to three-month, then six-month checkups. Finally, my checkups were stretched out to one year.
In late January 2017, our dog, Fred, and I went to a client’s paper mill in Texas with the plan being to go from there to Golden, Colo. for my oldest grandson’s birthday on Feb. 4. We were there for the weekend and then planned on driving back to Atlanta on Monday and Tuesday.
Sunday night I was having some stomach pains and told my daughter on Monday morning about them. Didn’t think too much about it. It takes two days to drive from Golden, Colo. to Atlanta, requiring an overnight stay west of St. Louis, Mo. The trip went OK, but my stomach pains never went away. I was soon having night sweats, aches and just plain feeling weird.
It was time to go see Dr. Winton again. He took a look at me, ran some blood work and said he wanted me to get a PET Scan. One was scheduled about five days out while we were there in his office (since I have started down this journey, they have built the Winship Cancer Center on campus and all exams are there).
Dr. Winton, obviously a doctor with some clout, started calling around and found he could get me in the Emory Midtown Hospital to a PET Scan machine that afternoon. So, Laura and I headed to midtown. I had the scan and they told me to not leave, wait for a few minutes.
Dr. Winton’s great physician’s assistant, Jessica Neeley, came on the phone, “We just looked at the PET Scan results, don’t go home, come back here and we are going to admit you right now.” (I have Jessica and Dr. Winton on speed dial on my phone, and they answer text messages promptly, day or night.)
This time, the NHL was in my groin and belly and was growing rapidly. I was started on chemo that night, a Friday night if I remember correctly. Sunday morning, they gave me Rituximab. The pain was so great, I asked for morphine, but it took two hours for the pharmacy to dispense it. I was told later that was the effect of the Rituximab exploding the cancer cells and that I had a lot of them.
A course of treatment was discussed with me and it was decided I would go through chemo and then have, if possible, an autologous stem cell transplant. “Autologous” means they harvest your own stem cells and then hit you with massive doses of chemo, essentially killing you before returning your own stem cells to you.
Dr. Winton had to release me to the care of the Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) department. Makes no difference that Dr. Winton had done the first bone marrow transplant in Georgia, back in the 1970s, but the hospital had grown and there was now a specialized department that took over my care. Dr. Winton looked in but was basically silent.
Dr. Winton knows my case very well, of course. He also knew the procedures used in the BMT department. He was worried from the beginning that they would try to push my body too fast to produce the necessary stem cells for an autologous transplant (an autologous transplant is much preferred; one from another donor has the same rejection possibilities that any donor organ has and dictates you be on anti-rejection drugs the rest of your life).
So, I went through various rounds of chemo, targeting donating my own stem cells in early April. I needed at least 2 million of my own cells in order for this to work. To harvest your cells these days, they have a three-line port in your chest. They hook you up to a machine that is essentially a centrifuge and they spin your blood, harvesting the stem cells which have their own specific gravity, returning the rest of your blood to you. So, one line pulls out your blood, one line returns your blood to you and the third line returns those cells that were in the boundary layer, a mixture of densities.
They tried in early April for two days and failed to harvest any cells. Dr. Winton told me, “I told you so – you make new cells slowly.” They sent me home for a few weeks to rest and make my own cells. This was an emotionally draining time.
Some people can pop out 2 million cells in one day (at the time, these harvesting sessions ran about $25,000 each). On the second try, first day, I think I got about 150,000 cells. The second day, I got about 300,000 cells. Now, during this time, there was a retired nurse, Ann, who had worked at Emory for Dr. Winton who went to our church. She wanted to know how things were going every day.
So, the routine was I had to go to the harvesting center about 7 a.m. every day. This would be over about noon. Then I would go to the infusion center and get fluids, blood or whatever else I needed (I suspect I have received 50-100 units of blood over the years). At about 4 p.m., I would get a call telling me what the harvested cell count was for that day and whether I needed to come back the next day. Then I would call the sweet, retired nurse, Ann, tell her, and we would pray.
Things were not looking good. Because of the cost (and I knew they had some sort of a cost containment agreement with our insurance company), I was worried they would shut me down. I got word that the chief of the BMT department wanted to see me in the infusion center before I went home on Wednesday. I told Laura this is bad; he is going to cut me off.
I had her get me a small piece of paper (oh, I wished for graph paper) and I took my results thus far, plotted them and drew a regression line by hand. It was a fairly good job, if I have to say so myself. It showed I would make 2 million cells by Friday.
He came in and we exchanged pleasantries. Before he had a chance to deliver his news, I bombarded him with my graph. I don’t know if he was really going to cut me off, but I never gave him a chance. He wished me well.
Turned out my graph was wrong. We blew through 2 million cells on Thursday. They had me come back on Friday, but I had dropped back down to a measly 150,000. But I had enough.
The next hospital stay was planned, and it started in mid-June with more chemo. They put my cells back in me on the afternoon of June 29, 2017. It was anticlimactic. They took my bags of cells, which had been cryogenically frozen, thawed them in a pan of warm water, and fed them in me as they did everything else.
Since I was in isolation in my room, due to danger of infection, only Laura and the staff that attended me were allowed in my room. However, since what I was doing was all they do on that floor of the hospital, everyone else that works on that floor knows what is going on.
At 5 p.m., the floor staff all gathered outside my door and sang “Happy Birthday.”
Jim 2.0 was here.
(To be continued.)
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.