Adventures at the Abels

So, about this time Danielle came down to Calgary to prepare for donating her cells. This consists of taking injections of a medication, called GCSF, that stimulates her body to produce stem cells. The extra stem cells will spill out into her blood and they can be harvested through a transfusion like process that separates the stem cells from the rest of her blood. She gets the rest back and they keep the stem cells to give to Micheal. Now I have to say the difficult part of this for Danielle is that she has a phobia, beyond a phobia of needles. They had to put her under to start an IV on a simple surgery they did back in August. So fast forward to now and we have the GCSF injection every day from Saturday the 27 of March until Tuesday the 30. The side effects of the injections are bone pain headaches, fatigue, dizziness. She got them all. By every evening she was feeling really terrible and the side effects increased everyday. She was pretty anxious for the first injection, but got a little braver every time. We appreciated a friend of Danielle's, Sean Casey, who drove Danielle down to Calgary, as she could not drive on the medication. He was a God send and we are grateful for his kindess to our family during this time.