Mike Kagerer

Hi All,

I talked to Mike this afternoon to get the latest!  I was gone on retreat since Friday. 

Mike didn’t have a good day on Saturday.  The chemo is making him sick and they are trying different drugs to help but he still doesn’t feel good today. 

Rick and Sal (Mike’s older brother and his wife) visited Mike today.  Rick is one of the donors and was at UofM to have his blood drawn before he donates on Monday, May 21st.

Mike has another roomate too so things must be hopping on the 8th floor.  They had told us he wouldn’t have a roommate unless the floor got really crowded! 

Mike said that the docs told him that he needs to get Radiation on Monday at 4p.m..  He has to lay still for at least 20 minutes and he is not sure how that will be since his hands have been twitchy.  Pray that he can just lay still long enough to get through it. 

We aren’t sure when the actually transplant will take place.  We thought that it would be on Monday but with him having Radiation now we’re not sure.  Although Rick is still going to donate tomorrow.  After he donates they will count the number of cells and see if there are at least 50,000,000.  If not he may donate again on Tuesday.

The way that Rick is donating is through his blood.  They take it out one arm and run it through a machine that collects the bone marrow (cells I think) and then they run his blood back into his other arm.  It takes about 4 hours.  Rick had to give himself one shot a day for 5 days in a row in order to donate.  Done this way it is an adult stem cell transplant.  It sounds like it may be easier on the donor than doing it through the bones.  I don’t know all the nitty gritty!

Anyway tomorrow is Day 0 and then we start to count forward for Mikes new life!!

Mom may get down to UofM a couple times this week and Bruce and I are planning on going on Thursday.

I’ll post again soon.
love,
Ann

Please continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers especially in the next few days. 

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 20th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Mike's Progress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.