Old blood

Cancer patients have to give up parts of their former selves.  They lose heath, wealth, hair, strength, productivity, identity, the right to dream and the hope to stay alive.  I lost most of those two years ago and have been trying to regain them ever since.

One loss that just occurred is gone forever.  In July of 2015, my first transplant called an autologous transplant involved removing my own stem stem cells, killing my bone marrow and replacing the stem cells to grow new marrow.  They did this knowing that an allogeneic transplant (with cells from a donor) would be needed at later date.  The procedure of removing my own stem cells usually takes a few days to get the recommended eleven million cells.  For unknown reasons, my body "overachieved" as the doctor put it and produced forty-six million in just one day.  The result of having extra stem cells was an opportunity to freeze them in case they would be needed at a later date.  

So the last remnant of my former stem cells (thirty-five million of them) have been on ice for the past year and a half.  They offered to keep them for a payment of just under $500 for a year.  If they are discarded, the blood that got me through most of my life would be gone forever.  With advice from my medical team, I let them go.  It was a bit of a difficult decision since there is no going back.  But then again, I've only had one thing in mind for the past two years and that is to only move forward.