Stem Cell Extraction Machine Explained; and a Documentary Team!

The video below, Julianne (Frank's girlfriend – he is my HSCT buddy from next door) explains how the machine that extracts send stem cells from your blood works. 

Although she is not a qualified member of the HSCT team, she is a fish biologist and so therefore knows her stuff… I think… Perhaps…

Anyway, she does a pretty good job of explaining exactly how the machine that is extracting my stem cells during the video works.

Stem Cell Evacuation!

You've essentially had your stem cells stimulated for four days in the hope that your bones will have produced enough stem cells for the team to harvest. It works out that they need about 2 million stem cells per kilogram of body weight. In my case, I was just over 80 kg. That's a lot of stem cells.

They wheel in a machine and plug it in next to you and which connects to your catheter in your neck. It takes blood out of your system, uses centrifugal force to separate what it needs and then sends blood back into your system. As far as I understand it, it's not a complete circuit that is continually taking blood out of one tube and putting it back in another. It takes blood out of one tube in your catheter and puts it back in that same tube once it gets out of it what it needs.

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