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Apheresis Help
I'm typing this on my iPhone from my hospital bed in Berkeley where I'm being poked multiple times to try to get blood flow fast enough for an apheresis required for the vaccine trial I'm on. The nurses here can't get a fast enough pull of blood from my port so they have to use the port as the return. Problem is they can't get a good vein on my left arm to
pull blood from. My veins are tiny after all the chemo.
They wanted to use my right arm but that would put pressure on the vein and potentially increase my lymphedema risk substantially, which I
don 't want to do. So now I'm stuck and certainly don't want to not even start the vaccine trial because of this.
Any suggestions???
Thanks!
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ER+ (30%)/PR-/HER-2+, stage 3
Diagnosed on 02/18/09 at 38 with a huge 12x10 cm tumor, after a 6 month delay. Told I was too young and had no risk factors. Found swollen node during breastfeeding.
March-August 09: neo-adjuvant chemo, part of a trial at Stanford (4 DD A/C, 4 Taxotere with daily Tykerb), loading dose of Herceptin
08/12/09 - bye bye boobies (bilateral mastectomy)
08/24/09 - path report shows 100 % success in breast tissue (no cancer there, yay!), 98 % success in lymphatic invasion, and even though 11/13 nodes were still positive, > 95 % of the tumor in them was killed. Hoping for the best!
September-October 09: rads with daily Xeloda
02/25/10 - Cholecystectomy
05/27/10 - Bone scan clear
06/14/10 - CT scan clear, ovarian cyst found
07/27/10 - Done with Herceptin!
02/15/11 - MVA-BN HER-2 vaccine trial
03/15/11 - First CA 15-3: 12.7 and normal, yay!
10/01/11 - Bone scan and CT scan clear, fatty liver found
now on Tamoxifen and Aspirin
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