They finally injected my first G-CSF under the skin on my tummy (administration does not hurt at all). It took longer than expected to arrive at this point, but the start of these injections implies good news. This morning they told me that my blood cell counts finally showed a rise. My immune system is not back to normal (they mainly look at the number of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that is involved in fighting acute bacterial infections), when their number is above 0.5 billion/liter of blood, I no longer need to be in isolation or take prophylactic antibiotics. Last Monday their number was 0.0, Wednesday it was 0.1, and today it was 0.3. Also, the number of other cell types showed has risen. All-in-all, this was enough for the specialists to decide that the stem-cell harvesting can take place on Monday at the VUmc, after four G-CSF injections.
