The Magic Number

The past few days have been so insane! My mom and I have spent approximately 24 out of the past 72 hours at Dana Farber clinics - while the hours have been overwhelming and exhausting, the results have certainly been rewarding.

On Monday, I went through quite a few tests to prepare myself for the stem cell transplant with no idea if my fourth Pet Scan was going to provide me with good news -- well, drum roll please, at 4:30 p.m. on Monday we found out that I have no residual disease left!!  I can't even explain how exciting this is for me and my family. I'm sure many of you are sitting at your computers asking, "What does this mean?"  Well, what it means is that I am now preparing my body and mind for a autologous stem cell transplant (translation= I will use my own) at DFCI.

I'm sure you might also be asking, well why do you need a transplant if there is no disease visible?  Essentially, it is the superglue that makes the remission stick and forcing the body to relearn everything it has ever been taught -- AND if the body doesn't know Cancer then it can regenerate itself without ever knowing Cancer's torturous existence.  The transplant is so powerful that I will have to receive all of my childhood vaccines again because my immune system will be completely erased.

This process is certainly not easy but seems to be our only option to defeat this disease -- it also holds quite a few magic numbers that M, B and I will be living by.  On May 18 I go in to have my stem cells harvested and we are hoping for 2 million in record time (preferably one to two days); on May 25 I am admitted to the hospital at Brigham and Women's (BWH) for hopefully less than 21 days; seven days after admission, I get my stem cells back and I experience the meaning of Day Zero; and at 100 days I look forward to living my life as close to normal as possible.

For the next week or so, I have to wait for insurance approval, go in for more blood tests and then I prepare for surgery to have a Hickman Line put in on May 17.  I will blog again soon but I wanted to share the good news with all of you!

xoxo
T

Click here to read more about Stem Cell transplants.