Stem Cell Transplantation

Today we met with Dr. Roy Jones and the stem cell transplantation team at MD Anderson.  If Mom moves forward with a stem cell transplant then Dr. Jones would take over as her primary doctor at MD Anderson replacing Dr. Thomas.  It will be up to Dr. Thomas to determine when Mom should have the transplant (if she agrees to do it).  He guessed about 6 weeks from now -- but we will know more after we meet with Dr. Thomas on April 14.  The way he explained the process was something like this.  They basically give her high dose chemo which kills the myeloma.  They wait until the velcade has killed as much myeloma as possible then they do in to deal the fatal blow to the myeloma remaining in her system.  The problem is this action also kills far too many healthy cells.  So prior to the high dose treatment they harvest stem cells from Mom's bloodstream and put them in a freezer.  Once the high dose has been delivered then they put the frozen stem cells back into a "clean slate" environment so that they can start producing healthy cells.  During this "regrowth" period Mom will be at high risk for infection as she will have an extremely compromised immune system.  Dr. Jones did say that she can most likely do all of this as an outpatient but it will mean many trips to MDA during the process.  Even though going back and forth will be a bit rough on Mom we can greatly reduce the risk of infection if we have her at home versus the hospital.  We have lots to read, to think about and to pray about.  The good news is that there is a very high rate of complete recovery following stem cell transplantation and over 50% of the patients are still in remission after 5 years.