Tomorrow

Tomorrow starts the process of stem cell harvest before the bone marrow transplant. The stem cell harvest isn't too horrible, but the phase after that, the bone marrow transplant is the part that actually kills 4-10% of the patients. (Depending on what you read.)

For the first phase, the harvest, they put a port in your chest that goes directly from the outside world to your heart. Then they give you massive doses of chemo to force the bone marrow to create stem cells and release them into the bloodstream. Then they harvest the blood and sort out all the stem cells. During this phase I'll probably be anemic and my blood chemistry will be pretty goofy. This is the easy part.

For the second phase, that I hope to start in November, they'll dose me up with so much chemo (and possibly radiation) that ALL of the bone marrow in my body will be killed. Obviously my blood numbers will be goofed up, but I'll also have zero immunity to infection because all the white blood cells and the bone marrow will be dead. After they kill everything, they put the stem cells they harvested back in my bloodstream and hope they recreate bone marrow. This goes on for 21 or more days. No, a nice room in the hospital (where all the germs are) is not a nice place to spend 21 days, but it's the place where they can catch and cure an infection asap.

Now the odd part. From what I've read, once the bone marrow is recreated, I'll have no natural immunity to anything I've ever had. I have to be re-inoculated for measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc. Yeah, all that goes away with this process! Wierd.

So, after the process and the recouperation, I might be able to get back to work for the start of 2008...... and if it all works out, there will be no more multiple myeloma cells in my system. Of course, that would only place me in remission, and there's the potential for recurrence, after which they can do the transplant process again and/or just keep me on maintenance chemo for the rest of my life. Quality of life is a big subject in my house.

I'm sorta lucky. The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are the places where this whole process was developed. Fred Hutchinson got a Nobel Prize for the process. There's not a better place on the planet to get this done.