Harvest

On Friday, January 8, my brother Mike Vander Zwaag and our sons Lucas (17) and Josiah (10), came to Chicago to visit. Jacob(19) and Jaden (14) were too sick to come, so they stayed back with grandma VZ. On Saturday, Mike showed us parts of Chicago that we had not seen but that he is familiar with.

Then in the afternoon we went to Shedd's Aquarium.  PLEASE, if you ever visit Shedd's, buy your tickets online in advance. We waited an hour in line just to get tickets!!  But it was still fun once we got inside!

On Sunday we just hung out and then they headed home in the afternoon.  It was really hard not having all 4 boys there. We missed Jacob and Jaden A LOT! But having the others visit was just the encouragement we needed.

Also on Sunday, Keith started his Neupogen shots. These shots created new stem cells that do not know MS, they are also called infant stem cells. The shots also made the stem cells come into his blood stream so that when they harvested his stem cells it would just be through his blood and not bone marrow. On Wednesday, Keith had a lot of bone pain from the shots which just meant his bones were working hard to produce more stem cells. But he only had pain for a day, and by the next day, it was gone. PTL! On Friday, January 15, Keith's stem cells were harvested. He had a line placed in his neck at 7:30am. Then at 11am they had him hooked up and ready. The line in his neck and the machine that he was hooked to were the exact same I had when I had Guillain Barre. His blood was pumped into this machine, then it would spin the blood and separate the stem cells from the blood. The stem cells went into a bag and his blood was pumped back into him. In 3 hours they collected a whopping 9 million stem cells, in just 3 hours. BOOM!

The bag on the right that looks like applesauce are his stem cells. The bag on the left is plasma, they took some of that out too, not sure why.

His line was removed from his neck and we were on the road home by 6:30pm and home by 10pm. We couldn't wait to see our kids!!

Other than the bone pain for a day, Keith tolerated everything very well. He is feeling good and has even been riding his snowmobile at night. He needs to stay away from crowds, sick people, and no eating from salad bars, no moldy cheeses, and no meat, fruit or veggies that have been cut at a deli/store. And he has to wash his hands A LOT!

On February 3, we head back to Chicago for our final time there, Lord willing. Keith will have 4 days of chemo to kill his immune system once more, and the on the 9th he will get his stem cells back to give his immune system a jump start towards healing. He will be in the hospital the entire time and hopefully discharged by the 21st.

We are so blessed to have another part of the journey completed. Praise the Lord! He is so faithful. We thank God for all of you - our supporters, prayer warriors, friends - and we pray that He will pour a special blessing on each and every one of you! 

"I thank my God every time I remember you."

Ephesians 1:3