About the first thing that Dr. Dudley told us on our tour of the laboratory where Woody's cells are growing is that his cells didn't like plastic...some cells grow well in the plastic containers they are supposed to grow in...but not Woody's...now the young lady who also has melanoma who toured with us...her cells LOVED plastic! The reason that Woody's cells were a bit reluctant to grow...sluggish the first time and just really slow the second time...and took lots of encouraging to grow. Dr. Dudley knew exactly what cells Woody was talking about when he mentioned that his cells were slugish...now Dr. Dudley has a face to go with the cells that he knows so well!
Woody has had a fairly good day. He got dressed mid morning and we came over to the lodge for about two hours...sat in the gazebo in the garden for a while and then sat in my room...hoping for the washer and dryer to be empty so I could wash (which never happened). Then we headed back to the hospital to await the chance of a lifetime...a tour where Woody's cells are growing!
I am late blogging tonight as Woody really wanted me to compose a collage of the pictures that I got to take today. I couldn't believe that they would let us take pictures...but we were encouraged to take them. Since I am so late, I'm not going to go into great detail...but will explain the pictures a bit by the number that I have on each picture.
#1 This doctor is working on a melanoma tumor that had been removed today (what they did to Woody's tumors). He is separating the parts that they need to grow the cells.
#2 This tube shows blood separated (like they did in apheresis)...They don't want the very bottom layer or the one on top of that one...but the next one up...darker color layer (I think).
#3 This is Woody looking at what the cells look like about two weeks after they start growing. I got to look too and saw a melanoma cell that still hadn't been destroyed.
#4 This is the young lady's cells that have been growing. She is at Day-7 (she will start the chemo tomorrow that Woody just completed). So her cells are 7 days behind Woody's in growth. The lighter substance at the bottom of these containers are her cells.
#5 This is the section where Woody's cells are stored...they are in some of the bags on the shelf...we think that 6 of those are Woody's cells. The bags show how much they have grown in 7 days!
#6 A very special moment...Dr. Dudley is handing Woody a bag of Woody's own cells!
#7 Woody holding his cells. His comment..."They are warm!"
#8 This is a vat where samples of blood of patients are stored for future study. You should have seen the puff of "smoke" that poofed out when he opened the lid (think movie set laboratory!) on this super cold vat.
#9 -168 degrees centigrade!!!!!!!!!!
Woody was able to eat some today...which is good as tomorrow is the BIG day...Day 0...he will start receiving his cells tomorrow around noon and will receive his first IL-2 a few hours later. Please be praying that he will tolerate this part...he had such a rough time with IL-2 before...especially pray that he won't have the rigors (shakes) like he did before.
This tour was absolutely wonderful...and as Woody told Dr. Dudley as we left the lab..."this gives me hope and every patient undergoing this here needs to go on a tour of this lab."
By the way the young lady who went on the tour is in the room right next to Woody's. So when we got back we stopped to talk and introduce ourselves...guess what...she is a patient of Dr. Sosman's! They live in Chattanooga. It really is a small world!!!!
Be sure to click on the collage so you can see more of the details in the pictures...for example...there are tweezers above the temperature in picture #9...that have frost on them...the doctor pulled them out of the vat.
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