Chemo + Transplant is hard.
She’s been getting plenty of rest and still eating well. Her poor little body body is exhausted.
Why?
First, let’s look at what the Conditioning Chemo she did leading up to BMT does:
- makes room in the bone marrow for transplanted stem cells
- suppresses the immune system to lessen the chance of graft rejection
- destroys any remaining cancer cells in her body
This helped her go into transplant MRD negative; meaning she had NO CANCER CELLS in her body.
Complete remission.
Why BMT then?
Cancer is caused by abnormal “rogue” cells that multiply, often quickly.
That means it’s possible for her cancer to return.
Her best chance at stopping her cancer is the bone marrow transplant.
The conditioning chemo killed off all of her stem cells and the transplant replaced them with new healthy ones.
What’s next?
We wait for engraftment.
Engraftment is when the blood-forming cells you received on transplant day start to grow and make healthy blood cells. Engraftment means your new cells are working properly and starting to rebuild your immune system. It marks the start of your recovery process. White blood cells are the first cells to engraft, followed by red blood cells and platelets.
Be the Match
We’ll closely watch her CBC counts over the next few weeks for signs of engraftment.
As well as adverse side effects, such as:
- Mucositis (sores in the mouth)
- Infections
- Bleeding
- Pneumonitis (swelling in lung tissue)
- Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)
- Hepatic veno-occlusive disease (VOD)
- Graft failure
This is why we’ll spend the next several weeks in the hospital… and continue to ask for your thoughts and prayers.
This is when things can easily go from one extreme to the next.
We’re hoping she continues to do as well as she has in the past and we push on through without too many really bad days.
