Our first Mother’s Day was, of course, so special, and for so many reasons. First and foremost, the break we have long needed is finally here. The road to stem cell harvest was not as easy as I thought. It’s all about timing. It began with a 24 hour hospital stay with 3 big blasts of chemo. This treatment was surprisingly one of my toughest yet. I was sicker and more tired than I have been in most of my other treatments, and both side effects seemed to hang on for a long time. Following the treatment, I had to give myself daily shots of Nupegin, which stimulates white cell production and also causes my bones to release these cells into my blood stream. Asking bones to do this is a painful process. The shots, which I have taken before, make me very sore, and for four days before the actual harvest, I had to take them twice a day, which made me very very sore. there’s more →