Monday, March 2, 2009

Paroled for good behavior

Day - 11 Health Score 78 (physically) 86 (emotionally happy to be home)

Today my blood went out for another spin. When it got back, I noticed that the stems had been trimmed.
Each consecutive day of apheresis, my body provided fewer and fewer cells for harvesting. 1.1 million on day 1, 0.95 million on day 2 and 500,000 on day 3. I wondered, "What can I do to improve this situation?" Then I remembered a young patient I once had. She was a seven year girl with an obstructing kidney stone. I performed ureteroscopy and fragmented the stone with a laser and removed, what I thought, were all of the fragments. I recall being impressed with how stoic she was about the whole experience; complaining much less than most of my adult patients. Two weeks later, however, her pain returned, and a retained fragment was seen in the ureter on x-ray evaluation. I explained to her mother and her that we would need to re-operate if the stone did not pass. It was clear that this upset the girl, but she held back the tears, trying to be strong. A few days later I got a call from the mom requesting that the surgery be cancelled. She related that her daughter informed her that she was going outside to jump on the trampoline to make the stone pass. Her mother felt conflicted; not wanting to crush the indefatigable confidence that only 7 year old logic can assert, but without also promoting false hope.
Twenty minutes later her daughter came in the house and, heading to the bathroom, exclaimed, "I passed the stone." Not knowing what to expect, the mother was completely shocked when, 3 minutes later, her excited daughter came out with this tiny brown stone pinched in her fingers.

I thought, "I have been lying in bed here for three days, my stem cells are just lying asleep in my bone marrow. I need to wake them up." So I designed a very biased, non-randomized, non-controlled study with an 'N' of one. I would ride the stationary bike for 30 minutes and go for a walk through the hospital for 20 minutes. Thereby increasing blood-flow through my long bones and washing out the stem cells.
Results: My count today was 700,000 cells proving that theory was correct. However, the difference in statistically insignificant with a p-value of 1.5 liters.
This was immediately accepted and published in Bogus-Science.blog between the articles, "Show me a food that isn't organic" by Hart E. Appetite and "Bottled water is a bargain and better for you than tap water" by Major U. S. Scam.
I escaped the hospital with the help of my mom and brother, David, and am happily reunited with the beautiful women in my life. It's good to be home.

Kevin

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

so glad you're home, Kevin!
Your medical background & logic have given you successful results once again.
btw, when you get the stem cells back, Barbie is in for a 'treat.' The colloid they suspend the stem cells in is a bit odiferous. I would walk in our front door and exclaim, "Ed's home; I small creamed corn!" Not too bad, as smells go, and it only lasted a couple days. love, Aunt Renie

Anonymous said...

Kevin-
Its Neal- Hey if you are still looking for a really cool pilot to hang out with and act as chaufer, cook etc, I am still available. I promise, I won't bore you with my "5g inverted dive with the MIG" story. Give me a call!