Transplant Next Week!

I just wanted to clear some things up here. I think I've mentioned this before, but I'll give a more through explanation of what a stem cell transplant is, and why it's not the thing that George 'Dubya' Bush and his cronies are trying to outlaw research on (although this doesn't make outlawing research on it okay).

The treatment that I will begin is a few days, called a Autologous Stem Cell Transplant, is a more modern term for the bone marrow transplants that Fred Hutch helped develop a couple decades ago. What happens in these types of treatments is that high does chemo and/or radiation is needed to kill every last remaining cancer cell, but chemo at these high doses also starts killing other healthy cells. The first healthy cells to go are the blood producing cells in the bone marrow. Everyone naturally produces a type of stem cell that has the ability to turn into any type of blood cell. Red blood cells, platelets, and white blood cells are among the most important. Next to go are other rapidly reproducing cells like hair, and mucous membranes. After chemo, the body is left unable to produce any of the different blood cells, and the bone marrow must be rescued.

There are two main ways to do this. They can either take closely matching bone marrow from a donor, or take it from the person needing the transplant to be frozen and used later for the rescue. The second is the Autologous transplant that I'm having.

I began my latest treatment in January, with two three week cycles of chemo.
This served two purposes; to get my cancer back into remission, and to stimulate stem cell growth. From what I understand, the immune system has to be first suppressed, then stimulated to get it to produce the needed stem cells, and get them to enter the blood stream before they've had a chance to morph into other cell types. The goal for me was to gather about 5 million stem cells, which was expected to take a few days, especially when the test the day before my collection revealed fairly low counts. The next day however, I kicked ass, and blood test revealed much higher counts. I went into the apheresis unit (with machines like a kidney dialysis machine) for 4 hours, and was able to collect just over 10 million stem cells.

So here I am now. The Docs just got finished deciding what they wanted to do with me. Before, I said on various profiles that I was a research dummy. Now I really am. I've signed up to be part of a few research studies and have blood and various other bits of me frozen and stored so that researchers can analyze it and see what's wrong with me.

What the Docs have decided is to use a set of three drugs, Busulfan in pill form, and Melphalan and Thiotepa by IV. All three suck. None are good for you, and all have potential long term side effects, but it's what I have to do.

I get Busulfan on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Melphalan on Wednesday and Thursday, and Thiotepa on Friday and Saturday. Sunday is a day off, and probably about when the suffering begins. Monday, I receive my stem cells back, and that's it.

Except that I have to recover. That will take about a month? May require a short hospital stay, and will be really sucky. I know about what to expect, but I'll get to that stuff as it comes.

I hope it all makes sense. The most misunderstood part is that it's not actually the transplant the cures the cancer, it's the drugs that necessitate the transplant. Interestingly though, a transplant does 'reset' the immune system, which is useful in autoimmune disease where the body's immune system attacks it's own good cells, and it also seems to have the potential to cure type one diabetes.

I also hope you understand why this isn't a 'controversial new treatment' as I've heard it called. But this doesn't mean that the type of stem cell treatment that Bush and his cronies are talking about doesn't have the potential to help me as well. Treatments from the work that California is funding, and the US government should fund as well, could very well save the life of myself and others in the future.

I guess my apartment warming party will have to wait. It's probably going to turn into an apartment cooling party. I can have visitors as long as you're clean and not sick, so please, don't be afraid to come visit me. I'm at 225 32nd Ave E, Seattle, but give me a call (253-691-1440) before you come :-)