A great nights sleep, besides waking up for the stimulation shots I managed to stay asleep most of the night. I am waking up all sweaty and jumped straight in the shower to be ready for my stem cell collection. The collection is like a dialysis machine which separates your lymphocytes and collects only the T and B cells out of your blood. I am hooked up to the machine for 5 hrs and the aim is to collect 2 million stemcells while your blood is cycled through twice. The machine is very sensitive and they had to give me blood thinners quite a few times as the flo wasnt steady enough and then they moved the machine on to the floor. This is a very painless procedure however you can not move for the 5 hrs so you have to wear a diaper for… well, just incase. There are some side effects that you may experience, like tingling and numbness around the mouth, headache and high blood pressure. I have been having headaches/jaw aches but I was thinking this could have been tension from lying still and the shots and steriods anyway. By the end of the 5 hrs I was busting for the loo and my blood pressure was a tad high meaning I was a bit flushed so I had some pain relief. Otherwise I was all good and finished by 1.30pm moscow time. Now I had to wait for the results to come about 5pm to see if we need to do another collection tomorrow. I collected 1.3 million cells in 160ml of blood so I am going back again. 2 days of collection is standard and nothing to worry about.

There has been an influx of other aussies who have arrived at the hospital and it was great to have those introductory conversations and to meet them all. There is a big contingency of us here now and carers for Joe to travel with too. Looks like there will be some fun times amongst the seriousness of this treatment.

It had been a busy morning and next was my dose of steriods, you dont get the yucky taste soo much when they are adminstered through the picc line, so thats one bonus. When things settled down Lucy and I had a nice afternoon nap and woke for dinner. The food is tolerable, not my ideal menu, but I am giving it a go and besides the jaw aches making it hard to eat I am coping with it.

Joe had to move rooms at the vega, the hotel he is staying at, as he was near the construction side and this was testing his patients with them working all night. Hopefully this helps him get some sleep.

The afternoon nap meant we were not tired so when the nurse came for the 11pm shot I was surprised that it was already this late and let me tell you the shots are much nicer if you are drowsy lol.