Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 - 4:00 PM

The technician takes the tube out of my other arm. It has been a long seven hours. The stem cells were not as concentrated in my blood as they'd hoped and the apheresis took longer than expected. Physically, I feel better than I'd feared I might. I don't have the light-headedness I sometimes feel after a blood donation which makes sense since they put all the blood back in. Mostly I'm just tired of being in that chair and want to go home. And I'm relieved that my contribution to this process is effectively over. In some ways it feels a little anti-climactic - a lot of effort for a small bag of yellow fluid. Especially since that fluid is basically just the extra cells I had floating around. But he needs them. In a week or so he'll receive a massive dose of chemotherapy that will kill all of his bone marrow. The stem cells they just sucked out of my body will be injected into his. If the transplant works, his blood type will change from whatever it was before to mine, AB-positive. The stem cells will begin creating new, undiseased blood and his leukemia will disappear. If the transplant doesn't work, he'll be left without a way to make blood and will die within days. I can't think of a much better definition of "last-ditch effort."