🌀Mood: Triggered. Resilient. Competitive. Determined. Faith-filled.

This week felt like my Olympics.

Not the glamorous kind.

The gritty kind.

The kind where your body is pushed to its limits and your mindset becomes just as important as your muscles.

The Hickman Line

Before stem cells could be collected, I needed a Hickman line placed.

For those who don’t know, a Hickman line is a central catheter inserted into a large vein near the heart. It allows doctors to draw blood, give medications, and collect stem cells without constantly sticking new IVs into your arms.

Simple in theory.

Less simple when you’ve never had surgery before.

I have never been cut open.

So when they started talking about making an incision in my chest, tunneling a line under my skin, and stitching it in place, I was anxious.

The woman who came to explain everything to me was incredible. Calm. Confident. Knowledgeable. She told me she might or might not be the one performing the procedure.

I asked her to be.

She agreed.

That alone lowered my blood pressure.

The procedure itself was about 30 minutes. I felt okay afterward. No nausea. No immediate complications. I was thankful.

But the next day?

A different story.

The Night of Pain

That night I experienced extreme pain.

The doctors were concerned about infection — the last thing you want before transplant. My doctor was ready to start antibiotics immediately.

I did not want that.

Antibiotics would complicate things. Delay things. Add another layer.

She paused and said we would wait until the afternoon to reassess the incision.

I was so thankful for that pause.

Thankfully, the pain began to settle and it wasn’t an infection. It was inflammation and trauma from the placement.

Stem Cells Rising

Meanwhile, Thursday morning the stem cell stimulation shots began to stimulate my bone marrow to produce and release stem cells into my bloodstream.

Filgrastim — twice a day for four days.

The shots themselves? No big deal.

After Darsalex Faspro during my first round of treatment — which looks like a barrel of a gun and takes seven minutes to push into your body — these felt like nothing.

They warned me about bone pain.

They did not warn me about this level of bone pain.

I would be fine… and then suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks.

And it hit in my lower back.

The exact place I had excruciating pain for five months before diagnosis.

That pain returning — even temporarily — triggered something deep in me.

PTSD is real.

My back pain had improved so much over the last few months. To feel that familiar ache again was emotionally jarring.

But here’s the twist:

The pain meant it was working.

The stimulation drugs were forcing my bone marrow to produce and release stem cells into my bloodstream.

My “baby stem cells,” as I’ve started calling them.

It’s wild to think about.

They are intentionally stressing my marrow so they can harvest the very cells that will rebuild me after chemo wipes it out.

Destruction.  Then restoration.

The Numbers Game

Here’s where my competitive side kicked in.

The goal is to reach a white blood cell count of 100 before collection. Not many patients hit that.

I didn’t get to 100.

I got to 88.

And 88 is the highest of any of their current patients.

I was thrilled.

The nurses were comparing patients, taking guesses about who would need an extra 8pm shot the night before collection.

I was the only one who did not need the extra shot.

I told them, “We’re going for gold. One and done.”

Only one collection day instead of two.

The Olympics are on right now, and my cousin — who is a nurse — told me, “This is your Olympics.”

It really feels that way.

Four days of pain. Fatigue. Emotional swings.

But purpose behind every ounce of it.

The goal is to collect 8–10 million stem cells.

It boggles my mind how the human body works.

It’s brutal.
It’s fascinating.
It’s miraculous.

What’s Next

Once they collect enough stem cells, I’ll get about a week to recover.

Then comes high-dose melphalan.

The nuclear bomb.

They will wipe out my marrow completely.

And then reinfuse my stem cells to rebuild it.

As we move closer to that day, the nerves are definitely setting in.

But here’s the thing.

I have cancer.

My attitude does not change that fact.

So I get to choose how I show up.

And I choose belief.

I choose grit.

I choose joy when I can find it.

I choose faith.

I am going for gold.

And I am going to make it through this.

A Clarification

I need to clarify something from post 32 – no stone goes unturned.

I was told my PET scan showed no active disease.

The next day, my doctor explained that while it’s not lighting up on imaging, I still have cancer cells present at a low level.

We went from 80% cancer in my plasma cells to under 10%.

Under 10%.

I was a little bummed when I heard that.

But let’s be honest.

Eighty percent to under ten percent in six months?

That’s still a miracle.

And most importantly — it does not delay transplant.