Two Days to Transplant

There are only two days until I receive stem cells from a stranger from somewhere in Europe.  It all happens on Friday and believe me Friday can't come soon enough.  

I'm currently in a dark room on the infusion floor of the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance building. I'm laying down on top of a hospital bed with the infusion pump right behind me, injecting another toxic drug called "Fludarabine". This is part of my preparation for the transplant on Friday. On Friday morning I am scheduled for full body radiation, then the transplant will happen in the afternoon or evening depending on when the cells arrive from Europe. 

All of the pre-transplant treatments are intended to prevent graft versus host disease or GVHD. These treatments reduce or suppress my immune system so my body is less likely to fight the new cells.  

The best I can expect is that I will get a little bit of GVHD. That way, the new stem cells create an immune system that will fight the cancer cells without me getting terribly ill.  The worst case scenario would be getting extremely sick from GVHD. The medical staff would have to drastically suppress my immune system which would open the door to pneumonia and a host of other serious ailments.

Unfortunately, we won’t know how much GVHD I’ll have until about two weeks after the transplant.  I tend to get along with people that I don’t know.  Hopefully my immune system will have the same tolerance while sharing my body with a new immune system from a stranger.