Transplant

I met with a pulmonary specialist last week to see if I have any permanent damage to my lungs. My lungs are improving every day. I do not need my home oxygen anymore. In fact, they came and picked up the oxygen today. Then I met with my doctor up at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. He decided that the best option for me would be a mini (non-ablative) stem cell transplant. The only catch is that I still need to be in remission. So I went in Tuesday for a bone marrow biopsy. Today, I found out that there is still no leukemia in my bone marrow. The next step is to meet with the Transplant team. I am also going to get out-patient maintenance chemo every week until the transplant so that I stay in remission. The SCCA is still looking for a good donor match for me. I have a couple of unusual markers, so all of the blood samples so far have only been a 8/10 match. Next Tuesday a promising donor is getting blood drawn for typing. He/she has at least one of the unusual markers-making them a 9/10 match. That is an acceptable match.

Most of you have already heard that I spent about 3 weeks in the hospital. I went into Good Sam with a fever. I spent about a week at Good Sam. They intubated me after I was having a hard time breathing due to so much crud in my lungs. I was still running a fever. They transfered me up to the UW after about a week. The fever ran its course and I woke up and was able to start breathing on my own. The next step is a transplant. The question is if I'll do a full transplant or a mini transplant. The SCCA is working on finding the perfect match for me. I have several matches-now they are collecting samples from potential donors to get the best match.