He awoke in his hospital the next day, more ill than ever before. The daily routine blood test had shown that his white blood cell count was now at zero. His immune system was dead. At this time the protocol dictated that he’d be given back the stem cells they had harvested and washed. X had had expectations as to what the stem cell transplant would be like. He thought perhaps they would do a surgery to ‘put in’ the cells. It wasn’t anything like that. In fact, it had been the easiest part of his protocol.
The nurse had arrived with a small pouch of fluid with a tube on it. It was about half the size of an actual blood pint bag. She said that they could start the transplant. X had been quite shocked.
“What do you mean?” he said.
She said, “This is it. These are your stem cells and now I’m going to give them back to you.”
She quickly attached the fluid to the stand and inserted the tube into the cathedar in X’s chest. X remembered this moment vividly. It was 6:30 p.m., November 12, 1998. His favorite program, Seinfield, had just started on the television. The bag emptied in under fifteen minutes. X’s autologous stem cell procedure was over. The only thing he had to do now was live and hope that his cleansed stem cells would begin working again.
Because he had no white cells left in his system, he had been in a restrictive quarantine. He could only accept his brother and his dad as visitors during the first few days. There were too many risks from the outside world that could infect him and kill him. Any small virus could have been deadly to his health. When his dad did come, he had to wash his hands very thoroughly and wear a surgical mask to cover his face. During the first few days, there hadn’t been a lot of changes. X had been extremely fatigued and slept often.
A couple of days later, he began to notice some blistering on his left leg. He thought it was very strange and immediately called the doctor. The doctor said it was probably a result of the localized radiation to the tumor site. He said that they’d watch to see if it would progress any further. It began to progress much further. In one week, he had second degree burns all over his afflicted leg. Huge blisters began forming around his surgical scars and thigh area. His entire groin area was covered in blisters and his scrotum was as thin as tissue paper. X thought that his manhood would never be functional ever again. It had been disgusting and scary. The burn team at the hospital came to see X. He had thought one doctor would come by to see him, but the doctor brought all of his young resident doctors and students to get a first hand look at him. He layed in the bed, totally nude from head to toe while a group of ten people looked at him. He had felt like a subject, yet at the same time, he laughed about it. He had been somewhat proud of what rough shape he’d been in.
The doctor prescribed a burn cream to be applied every day. Because of the intensity of the pain in the leg, the doctor put him on a morphine drip. This permitted X to self medicate simply by pressing a button. In the beginning, he had not used the button too much because he’d been afraid of the effects. By the second week of the transplantation, he’d used it very liberally.
When a person loses their immune system, strange things begin happening to the body. First of all, all the bacteria and things that live in your GI tract dies. So, everything from your mouth until your rectum falls out of you. The result is persistent diarreha. You are continuously going to the bathroom. Because X had been going to the bathroom so often, the nurses instructed him to use baby wipes for cleaning. It was just so much and so often. Secondly, you start having mouth sores. This had been another reason why X had been put on morphine. The inner lining of the mouth begins to peel away. X mouth had turned a sort of grey in color. Large portions on the top of his tongue began falling off. X had torn a portion of his tongue off that had been flapping around. At that point, the nurse began using a suction device located behind X’s bed to vacuum out his mouth. Because of the constant falling of the inner tissue of the mouth, the cleaning happened quite often. Because of the morphine, it was an absolutely normal thing to be having done.
X lay in bed all the while being very closely monitored. He hadn’t felt anything after awhile. Maybe that was the best way. He kept punching the morphine button whenever the next dose allowed him to. At this point, he hadn’t wanted to feel anything. He didn’t eat of course. Fluid bags hydrated him.
He didn’t have any idea of how he looked. He can’t imagine how his family felt, seeing him like that. It must have been extremely frightening for them.
All X could do was wait now. Live and wait. Each day the nurse would take a new sample of blood to see if there was the slightest trace of white blood cells. Each day, there had been nothing. For thirty-five days he lay in a hospital bed without an immune system. Then, one beautiful morning, the results came back positive. White blood cells were detected.
The doctors said it was a good sign. They said that the stem cells now had to find their way home into the bone marrow and then remember that they were the ones who create white cells. When the stem cells begin to make new cells, it can progress much more quickly. Each day brought higher white cell counts in his blood. The cells were mulitplying more and more. X’s immune system had been killed and brought back to life. It was a miracle.
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