Hello to all,
I had a great meeting on Wednesday (the 14th) with my new doctor - the transplant hematologist. His name is Dr. Fraser and he is very experienced with this whole process. He completed a 4 year specialized fellowship after medical school to become a clinical scholar and teaches hematology at McMaster University. He and the Transplant Co-ordinator, Carol, explained the procedures that I would be undergoing these next months and they were very patient with this patient and my pages of questions for them!
MY ROAD TO REMISSION PLAN
In order to get to the stem cell transplant, which is the final step in this whole process, I will first undertake multiple blocks of treatment to get my body into a state of readiness:
Block 1: Chemo regime. This first chemo regime is designed to get me in remission or as close to that state as possible - without achieving this, I cannot undergo the tranplant. This chemo is called GDP which is an acronym of the 2 drugs and 1 steriod I will being taking over a 6-8 week period. The cycle is intended to be Day 1 Gemzar and Platinol which are the chemo drugs. Day 2-7 is the decadron steroid and then if my counts are high enough, day 8 is chemo again - if my counts are too low another week is added - then 1 week recovery, 1 week rest and REPEAT all one more time. Then we will do scans to see if this worked. If so then we go to -->
Block 2: Pheresis Catheter installation. This is very similar to a Hickman catheter. Some may recall during my first bout I had a PICC line in my arm. This was a tube inserted in my vein and up to the vena cava. I had a few inches of line outside my arm and this was the access to draw blood or administer the chemo drugs. Well, the Pheresis, is very similar accept it would not snake through my arm but rather at the top of my chest, with the exit below my collarbone.
Block 3: "Cell Motivator" I will have a day of chemo with a drug called Cyclophosphide (sp). This drug is sort of a bully that pushes stem cells out of my bone marrow and into my blood stream. This will be followed up by 10 days of injections of a drug called neupogen in hopes of stimulating my marrow to produce massive amounts of stem cells. Not that any of this will be pleasant but I am told this is distinctly 'discomforting' due to the pains in your bones as your marrow is hyper-stimulated...
Block 4: Harvest! This process lasts about 1 to 2 days. I am hooked up to a machine kind of along the lines of a dialysis...my blood is filtered out of me by this machine and whirled through the machine to separate the stem cells from the rest of my blood and the remaining blood is filtered back into me. Lather, rinse, repeat about 6 to 8 times and the goal at the end of the process is to have a very large baggie of stem cells (ideal 5 million per every 6kg of body weight) to be frozen for later...
Block 5: Chemo regime 3. This round directly follows the Harvest. The drug cocktail here is extremely fierce - 10 times more powerful then my ABVD regime from 05. The combo is called BEAM. Very potent. It will be administered to me for a week straight and the goal with this is to kill off all of my bone marrow and cancer cells. Kill! Kill! Kill! :) . This is a long week but the ultimate goal is just around the corner...
I will explain the actual Stem Cell Transplant time line in my next entry.
Be well and with much gratitude,
Carey
4 years ago
