Day -1 - day 0

Day -1

Because of all the fluids Caitlin has been getting to protect her bladder from the 

chemo, she has started holding onto fluid. She is starting to look like the Michelin man,

so they do what they do best and give her another drug to help get rid of it.

Works a treat though.

Because she has an unrelated donor she is at risk of graft vs host disease, so she has

now started taking anti rejection drugs. She will have to take these for a while yet.

Day 0  May 22nd

What a day! It almost didn't happen today! Someone from New Zealand (not sure who) went over

to Germany to collect the bone marrow that the donor kindly had harvested on Tuesday. 

This was a surgical procedure for her, and brought it back. It arrived in New Zealand at

10 am this morning, it then had to go to blood services to get the red cells taken out. This

took longer than expected. They don't like doing the infusion too late in the day, they said

if it wasn't going to be here by 7 pm it wouldn't happen until tomorrow morning. At 6.30 a man

arrived with the bag of fresh bone marrow and everything went to plan.

But first, this morning Caitlin needed a platelet transfusion and a blood transfusion. 

This is the platelet transfusion.

                 


           This is the blood transfusion

Caitlin with her new bone marrow

Here is the bone marrow going into their new home.

It can take around 10 - 14 days to show signs of new cell growth.

So now we wait!