The hardest part about the intermediate step in the stem cell donation process was not the pain from the needles.
You might think that it would have been, since I received two injections for five days straight.1 The needles went into the fleshy skin on the bottom of my triceps, which is not an area I’m used to thinking about. The nurse alternated arms so I wouldn’t have freckles of needle-sticks peppered all over the same area of skin. She would pinch the skin and then press the needle in, pushing the medication through the syringe slowly to avoid disturbing the skin too much or losing any of the liquid. The needles hurt; but they were not the worst part.
You might think that the hardest part about the shots was dealing with the side effects of the medicine. The drug in the injections, filgrastim, stimulates the body’s production of stem cells so that they can be collected and sent to the recipient. In particular, it targets the large bones in the body, so donors often feel soreness in their hips, arms, legs and joints. My hips were generally fine, aside from some occasional tenderness; I felt it much more in my knees. The pain wasn’t debilitating – it felt very similar to the growing pains I remembered from being eight or nine years old – but it certainly hurt.
(In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have picked S up quite as often as I did, or done as much walking as I did. But, unfortunately, life doesn’t stop just because people have important things going on. Kids need holding, groceries need buying, and, in my family’s case, sick family members need taking care of.)
The hardest part about the shots wasn’t the anxiety either. It’s been well-established by this point that I’m not the best patient when it comes to discussing medical procedures, let alone participating in them. Starting the shots meant that the process had begun in earnest. It meant that my body’s stem cell production was going into overdrive and that, in a few days, I was going to be hooked up to other needles for hours at a time. It meant that I was going to have a central line put in because my arm veins were too small2 and that I was going to have to find some way to deal with it for a day in order to try to save a man’s life.
It also meant that there was no turning back; sure, the Be the Match people had said that I could stop my participation at any time and that it was completely voluntary. But they had also told me that my recipient would start receiving treatment a few days before my first shot. His doctors needed to effectively destroy his immune system so he would have a blank slate once my stem cells were introduced. If I backed out voluntarily after his treatment had started, he was most likely going to die and I was not willing to have that pressure hanging over my head. I had started the donation process and I was going to finish it.
The hardest part about the shots wasn’t the needles or the achy joints or the anxiety or even the terrible headache I got that first night.
The hardest part about the shots was tearing off the Band-Aids each day.
Seriously.
Have you seen my arms? They have hair on them. My chest, my stomach, my legs, all covered in hair. I got a cardiogram once at my doctor and the tech had to shave off some of my chest hair in order to get the nodes to stick properly; I looked like Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Two shots per day meant two Band-Aids per day. And, since they had to give me the shots in slightly different areas each time, there was always a new spot of hair that was getting torn off when I removed the Band-Aids. Were these industrial strength bandages? Were they actually small pieces of duct tape instead of the usual plastic or fabric bandages? Was their adhesive actually made from Gorilla Glue? That’s what they felt like. I read through all the information about how to prepare for my central line procedure, what to expect during the collection and how long the recovery would be but I never read anything about the Band-Aids.
I always waited a day to take off the Band-Aids. I told the nurses that I was waiting so I would be sure which arm had the shots last so they would alternate.
But I really was just afraid to take them off.
This is part of a series I’m writing documenting my experiences donating stem cells through Be The Match. If you missed them, you can also read the other installments in the series. Please also visit Be The Match to find out more about their mission, their program and the people they have helped. I hope you’ll consider joining the Be The Match Registry so that you can potentially help save someone’s life.
Just in case you were wondering, I haven’t partnered with Be The Match in any official capacity for this post, aside from my being on their donor list. I wasn’t compensated at all, nor will I be for any future posts or my involvement in the program.
1. Technically, I got them for six days straight, since I can’t do anything the easy way. Most people, though, get the shots for five days.↩
2. Seriously. Nothing ever happens the easy way.↩
