Friday July 31st...TRANSPLANT UPDATE

Charmaine is feeling very good now. Finally over the side effects of the last chemo treatment.

This has been a week of back and forth to Emory. The transplant team has started getting everything in place.

We found out the dates. She will check in August 26th to start a week of conditioning to get ready for the transplant. She will have 2 or 3 days of intense chemo then 2 days of full body radiation. These will completely destroy her immune system. That is called day zero. That is when the transplant will be done. It is scheduled for September 1st.

We also were told that her donor is a 19 year old male outside the United States. I wonder if he might be a military person?

We also found out she will be getting a stem cell transplant instead of the bone marrow. That's supposed to be easier on her to graft the new cells than marrow.

We go back today for more tests and bone marrow biopsy. Tuesday they took 25 vials of blood for testing. The nurse said she had never taken that many at once before.

If all goes well they said she would be in the hospital 2 to 3 weeks. That's less than we expected.

I will update you on today's visit.

Pray that she will accept the new cells with no rejection.

Sam

Our Visit went well today. Her bone marrow biopsy was postponed until tomorrow. Today she had a c scan on her chest, an ekg on her heart and a pulmanary test on her lungs.