Dear Friends and Family -- December 18, 1999
Dear Friends and Family...
Rachel's bone marrow transplant took place Thursday night at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. Amanda, her 17 year old sister, arrived with Diana at the hospital at 8am Thursday morning. Amanda was hooked up to a machine... a tube in each of her arms. For about five hours all the blood in her
body was fed through this machine and back into her body.
Amanda's stem cells, brought forth by five days of shots in her legs before the procedure, were "culled" out by the machine and placed in a bag which was sent to a nearby blood bank for processing.
Our oldest son, Kenny, gave Amanda her shots each of the days before she went to Kansas City. He came in the first night from work at J.C. Penney's and found Amanda and me preparing the shot... obviously we looked pretty worried as Kenny asked "What's the matter."
I explained that Amanda had to take her first shot... he could tell I was nervous and Amanda was scared. He calmly said, "I'll do it."... shocked the heck out of Amanda and me! He took her back to Diana/my bedroom and easily gave her her shot.
He was in charge of the shots every night after that. I believe each of us is given gifts and the past three months... through this hellish trip, Diana and I have been witnesses to viewings of special gifts in all of our children... a wonderful thing for a parent to get to see.
And speaking of gifts... Thursday night the bone marrow specialist came in and told us that usually they hoped for about 10 million stem cells from the first harvest. But there would be no need for a second day's harvest as Amanda had donated over 30 million from her body that morning! The doctors were stunned!
So Rachel got 10 million cells from Amanda that night.... 10 million were frozen if more are needed down the road for Rachel... and we donated 10 million more to the blood bank with Amanda's blessings.
After the transplant had begun in the hospital room Amanda and I spent the night at the house of friends in the Kansas City metro area. The next day we returned to the hospital to stay with Rachel and Diana for the day.
So far Rachel is doing well. The hard part is further down the road as Amanda's stem cells begin to set up shop in Rachel's bone marrow. Then "battles" will rage within Rachel's body between her old cells and
the new cells produced by Amanda's stem cells. This will be the hard time for Rachel physically. We appreciate the post cards and other cards that Rachel has gotten at the hospital.
Many years ago my Mom used to make decorations in our house out of the cards we received so I got the idea from her of creating a "card tree" on one of the walls in Rachel's room. I cut out strips of green construction paper and then Diana and I cut a jagged edge on each strip to look like a trees branches. We then taped these strips in a large triangle on the wall (we use hospital tape we found at a pharmacy in Topeka as it doesn't rip the paint on the wall). Rachel drew and cut out the star which is at the top of the tree. We've been fitting the cards/postcards within the triangle as they arrive each day... they look like ornaments on the tree. We have postcards with scenes from England, Scotland, Washington DC, California, Kansas etc... It's a neat sight. Rachel has also put up artwork on the walls... anything to
make the hospital room look better!
Through the wonders of technology we have Internet in Rachel's room and if any of you would like to send her greetings her email address at Children's Mercy Hospital is: ***********. Also... if you'd like to see some pictures of Rachel online a couple of wonderful people have helped us put them up at:
http://www.geocities.com/rachelville/photo/fam.html
Sunday Diana and I will be fortunate enough to see the Assumption School Christmas pageant together as a good friend will be watching Rachel in the hospital. As always... thanks for the prayers and good thoughts. We wish you a blessed Christmas and a belated happy Hannukah.
Bill and Diana Sowers
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