Infused

Well that went well and was uneventful. I thought I would quickly share a bit about it with curious people. I found it all pretty interesting.

My cells were frozen at -176.6 °C, which obviously is quite cold. It’s amazing the cells don’t suffer damage from that. It only takes a quick 3 minute luke warm bath to warm them up enough to be infused.

The cells were clear, which was quite surprising to me. I was expecting them to be salmon colored, like my stem cells were. I was told they go through such a purification process, everything else is removed. No extra reds or platelets in there! It ended up being just 71 ml of T cells and preservative.

Speaking of preservative, I got the tomato soup flavor in my mouth again from it. It went away after about 15 minutes. Apparently, I still smell to other people. I find it weird that I can’t smell it. My wife says I smell like tomato soup, my son says I smell like burnt pine wood, and my daughter says I smell like a sweet chemical.

I was told that my engineered T cells get to work right away and are busy multiplying and killing myeloma. My moment of kicking the hornet’s nest is approaching in a few days, when my cells really start swarming.

I got a Car-T band in case I showed up at a hospital unexpectedly. They don’t want another doctor to accidentally kill off my expensive cells with something they do. I guess I’m part of the club now.

Today’s check up was uneventful. Just labs and a neurological check. I pretty much feel fine. I’m finally getting over the nausea from the chemo, so that is great!

I got asked what a table and a tv were and which hospital I was in. I told them Stanford just to get a reaction, although I’m not sure how long I can get away with answers like that. The nurse told me she can have a full conversation with someone and then ask them what a tv is, and they can’t answer that question. So it will be interesting.

I’ll see how long I can keep up with writing until I lose my marbles 🥴. (Hopefully only temporarily!)