After a late night and lots of fun and games, Joni-Mai settled down for a good night's sleep. She slept very well and by the time morning came, she was ready to start her harvest. Her machine was called "Ginger" - named after the Spice Girl - and was ready to be hooked up to Joni-Mai. The process requires blood to be taken out of her, it is then put through the harvesting machine, which spins it at such a speed to separate the stem cells from the rest of the blood. As the machine takes blood out, other blood is put back into her like a blood transfusion. The blood that replaces the blood they take out is donated blood, this means she has - essentially - had 2 blood transfusions in one week. It's quite difficult knowing she depends so highly on blood from other people but it is a necessity.
Each harvest takes 4 hours and it takes another hour (after flushing the blood through the machine and her VAS-CATH) to get the results back, we then know whether or not she has to stay in another night for another harvest or if she is able to go home after the removal of the VAS-CATH.
After being un-hooked from "Ginger" Joni-Mai joined a leaving party for one of the young boys who finished his treatment today. Hamza, an 8 year old boy was leaving after finishing treatment for a brain tumour. Thankfully, his tumour was in a place they could remove. So, after a long course of radiotherapy, he was leaving to continue with his life. At the end of Hamza's leaving party, Joni-Mai's harvest results were in and she was able to leave! They had harvested a HUGE 7.2 MILLION stem cells in less than 200ml of blood which was astounding.
After the removal of the VAS-CATH - which was unpleasant, to say the least - we were free to go home and enjoy the last few days before VIDE 4 began!
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