Hopkins Called

One of the phone calls Jon has been waiting for was the one that came today -- the insurance for the CAR-T has been approved, and Hopkins is working to make it all happen sooner. The scheduling challenge is getting the Interventional Radiology people to have the necessary openings (one in the early morning to put in the central line and one in the late afternoon to take it back out again).  Once they figure that out, they will call and we will mobilize. 

Other phone calls were less interesting. His platelets are still low but since he has no bleeding anywhere, they will let him be. Always more blood tests in his future, like tomorrow.

So, for those who are not following every medical detail perfectly because this is such a long story with so many pauses -- CAR-T cell therapy is a type of immunotherapy made from your own T cells by modifying them in a lab and then infusing them into your body as a therapy specific to your disease. (I just cut and pasted that sentence from a website called "Introduction to Cell Therapy.") So, the first step is to collect up Jon's T cells and send them to a lab. The modification takes six weeks or so. The cells are trained/engineered to capture the multiple myeloma cells and kill them. Pretty amazing.

We have been through this cell collection process before (called pheresis). It takes a long time, like all day. Jon just lies on a bed and the blood comes out through the central line that has been installed, it gets spun in a machine, and blood is returned to his body without some of its cells. What I remember is the blood is colder when it comes back in, so it takes a lot of blankets to keep the patient warm.

Everything about this medical process is hurry up and wait. Mostly wait. But when the time comes to go to Baltimore, we will hurry up.


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