So what is this stem cell transplant lark?

Just because someone asked here is the run down of what will happen to me starting next week.

I will be admitted to Ward 40 at Glasgow Royal Infirmary on Tuesday 19th June. I will be shown to my little room and no doubt numerous pints of blood will be taken for infection checks etc. I'll then have a quiet night before the fun starts on Wednesday. I will then start high dose BEAM chemotherapy which will be given in potentially lethal doses if I didn't have the transplant at the end of it.

Day -7
See what I've done there? Those wacky oncologists do a countdown now to transplant so Wednesday will be day -7 to transplant.
Today I will get the "B". It is called BCNU and is given to me through a drip into my line over about 2 hours

Day -6 to Day -3
On these days I will have two drugs. Ara-C and VP-16. I believe these are given as two 1 hour drips

Day -2
On this glorious day my body will receive its last ever dose of chemotherapy and that is fact. No matter what the outcome of this whole transplant procedure I will not be having chemo again.
The drug is called Melphalan and takes between 15mins and 30mins to administer.

Day -1
Bugger all. It's called the "Rest Day"... sounds ominous.

Day 0 - hopefully June 27th 2007.
My new birthday. Today I am reborn with my life-saving stem cells that were harvested a couple of months back. They will be given back to me via a transfusion and should only take a couple of hours.

Now I wait for my bone marrow to go into terminal decline and for my stem cells to administer the Last Rites and make sure the marrow does the greatest comeback since Lazarus. I get blood tests twice daily to monitor what is going on and seemingly the worst pain is with something called Mucositis and this usually kicks in for the period of Day +3 to Day +11.
I believe it hurts like hell and 75% of SCT patients get it. I'm due a break so hopefully I'll be in the 25% that don't really experience it.

Ha..right!

From Day 0 it is really just a pain management and waiting game. My blood is monitored constantly and as soon as the white blood cells and neutrophils return to a sufficient level to give me some form of low-level immunity I'll be discharged. There is no method of working this time out so I could be in hospital for anywhere between 3 to 6 weeks.

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