First treatment done

Today has gone pretty well over all!  Greg had his Quinton catheter put in his neck this morning about an hour after we arrived at the hospital.  The Quinton catheter is put in the same site that they use for his heart catherizations, but this catheter also sticks up all the way to his ear (with two different tubes coming out).  The anesthesia wasn't effective at making him sleepy during the procedure (he's built up quite a tolerance over the past few years) so he was very aware of everything they were doing - and that darn catheter has been giving him lots of pain ever since.  He had plasmapheresis done this afternoon for a few hours (they send his blood through a machine that cleans out the antibodies before sending his blood back into his body.  It wasn't a great experience, but he got through it okay and they handled the symptoms he felt during the procedure really quickly.

Greg finally (a couple minutes ago) got some pain medication to help with that some hopefully it'll kick in pretty soon.

Tomorrow he'll go through another treatment of plasmapheresis, and then he'll be started on the chemotherapy medication that will knock out his B-Cells.  Then he'll have a treatment of the immunoglobulins before he can go home (which they're saying will be Friday at the earliest).  After all of these treatments, they will send blood back up to Johns Hopkins to see if the treatments were effective, and that will determine what they do next.  He'll definitely be going back weekly for the chemo medication, but he might need additional plasmapheresis if this wasn't completely effective.

Aside from being in a lot of pain, Greg is handling this really well.  Please pray that he would be able to get good sleep tonight and that he would not experience a lot of bad side-effects tomorrow.

Thanks,
Elise