Chris's Second Bone Marrow Transplant

These are pictures of Jonathan to give you an idea of what the donor goes through.
This is Jonathan. He was 5 when he gave his bone marrow the first time. This was done through a series of needles in his back and hips to draw bone marrow from the bones themselves. In these pictures for Chris's second transplant, Jonathan is 10. This is a different procedure called an atheresis. The blood is drawn out of the patient through the neck or groin area, depending on patient and doctor. Then the blood is separated through the machine, and the marrow goes into a bag for collection, and the rest of the plasma, platelets etc goes back into the patients body. The blood is kept warm the whole time through the machine so it can be placed back into the patient's body. The process takes approximately 2-3 hours, but for some reason Jonathan's took 4-5 hours. He was very scared about the tubes in his neck, but he was also very brave. I am proud of him.