Hooked up

I am sitting in the infusion center at St. Luke's Hospital getting my stem cells collected right now. Yesterday I came in at 7 am and had to go home because I didn't have a high enough platelet count. I had a platelet count of 5 yesterday and I needed a 10 or more to collect. The only problem with this process is that you have to wait 2 hours to know if you can get hooked up for another 4 or 5 hours. Yesterday I went to the apartment that we will be staying at in two weeks. It is 1 block next to the Cherry Creek shopping center.
Today I went to Walmart and got my oil changed. They called me on my cell phone to let me know that I had a platelet count of 19; so hopefully that means I can collect all today. The machine is very interesting that I am hooked up to. It looks like a giant old tape/computer from the 80's. It even has little black spinning wheels. They connect four tubes to my catheter and hook it through the machine and the blood comes out of my body and goes through the tubes into a container that scoops out the top of the blood where the stem cells are collecting; and then it rotates through to a heater and goes back into my body. So far I am a little cold and light headed but for the most part I am not that bad. At Walmart I got to movies to watch; Mr. Deeds and Runaway Bride, and I got pencils and a sketch book so I am all set.