Harvest another day

Hello all! After completing the first phase (stimulating the production of stem cells), I entered the second phase yesterday (harvesting stem cells).

The harvesting of the stem cells is done through a large machine (a type of dialysis device) that is connected to the neckline that has been placed with me (see previous update). My blood flows through this connection to the device and here the stem cells are filtered out. Below you can see what that setup looks like:

The stem cell harvesting sessions take quite a long time, around 5,5 hours a day! During this time, my blood supply goes completely through the machine twice to filter out the stem cells. Eventually they end up in a separate bag, which looks like this:

It doesn't seem like a very large amount, but this bag already contains millions of stem cells! The amount they would like to collect amounts to 2 million stem cells per kilogram of body weight. Based on my weight of about 65 kilograms, they are aiming for a total of at least 130 million stem cells!

The first day they were able to collect about half the required amount, today this was unfortunately only a quarter. This means that tomorrow I will hang an extra day on the device to collect the rest of the required stem cells. A short delay, but that is not a disaster! You feel little about the whole process. What you especially notice is that your lips will tingle at times, very special! On to tomorrow, expected to be the last day of harvesting ...

See you soon!

Greetings, Stephan