My second appoint of the day was at the John Theurer Cancer
Center with Scott D. Rowley M.D. for my transplant consultation. Dr. Rowley is
member of the Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program at the Cancer Center. The
consultation lasted 3 hours. I must say that all the information we received
was a bit overwhelming. My wife and I received a very detailed education on the
process. On top of our discussion we were given a book to read titled: Bone
Marrow and Blood Stem Cell Transplants: A Guide for Patients and Their Loved
Ones by Susan K. Stewart. The book covers transplants from soup to nuts. It
spans from the planning process and finding a donor through living life after
your transplant.
For me, the first step will be for my Transplant Case Worker
and Transplant Insurance Coordinator (which are provided by the Cancer Center)
to get the ball rolling by contacting my insurance and getting the authorization
to start the process.
Once this is done I will be asked to provide the contact
information for my siblings. What this means is that I will be getting an Allogeneic
Transplant. With this the stem cells or bone marrow will come from a donor. The
reason I am not getting an Autologous Transplant (which would be transplanting
my own bone marrow) is that we basically have two goals with the transplant. 1.
Eliminate Mantle Cell Lymphoma from my system. 2. Provide me with a new, uncompromised immune
system. By getting someone else’s healthy bone marrow, it will see any remnants
of my MCL as foreign cells and attack and kill them.
An interesting thing I learned was that donors need to be a
tissue match with me. I had thought they had to be a blood type match, but this
is not true. Actually if the donor’s blood type is different from mine, after
the transplant my blood type would change to be the same type as the donor.
There is a 1 in 4 chance that my siblings are a match with me.
If they are not a match there is a Bone Marrow Donor Registry that will be
searched. As a 3rd option, my daughters could be donors. This would
be what is considered a “half match”. There are some complications with this
but it has become more and more popular over the past year.
Once the up front leg work is done and a donor is found we
then are in a waiting game. We will see how effective my Ibrutinib treatments
go. Assuming all goes great; Dr. Goy will give Dr. Rowley the go ahead with the
transplant. The transplant will require me to get some chemo therapy/radiation
to knock out my own immune system. I will then get the transplant. I will need
to be in the hospital for about 3 ½ weeks. Once I get to go home I will need to
be isolated for another period of time that could span from 3 to 6 months.
All I can say is WOW!!!! This was an awful lot to take in.
And there is much I left out (such as all the risks that come with a transplant). At
the end of the day I can will listen to the experts and do what they think is
best for me. But what I really need to do is to put this in in the hands of
God.
"We put everything into the hands of God."
2 Corinthians 1:9
More to
come…
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