First off, let me apologize for the radio silence. But rest assured, that in this case, no news is good news. Mom is feeling much better and is relatively pain free these days. She went to the doctor on Tuesday to find that her blood tests confirm she is getting better every day. Her protein levels have dropped down to 2, based on blood collected 3 weeks ago. They drew more blood this week which I’m positive will show her proteins dropping even lower. Just so you know, they started at 8. We want them to be 0.
When I last updated, mom was having a difficult time simply walking across the room. Last week, she actually went to the grocery store. Of course, she wore a surgical mask to avoid germ exposure. Daddy joked that several people handed her their wallets. I guess it’s better to mistake her a for a thief than an extreme Michael Jackson fan. Luckily, she didn’t wear a sequined glove.
There have been quite a few changes. Five months ago, Mom stood just a hair taller than me at about 5’8”. Today, she looks up at me from about 5’3”. We are hoping she will be able to get back some of her height, but I’ll take health over height any day. Oh, and she can also finally raise her arms above her head like the angel picture on this blog. That was one of her goals from the start.
December is test month. The doctors will be giving her a thorough work over testing everything they can think of to ensure she is “fit” enough for a stem cell transplant. (Of course, I would prefer that she be fit enough not to need said transplant)
So some might be asking, “what is a stem cell transplant and why does she need one?” Let me see if I can shed some light on the subject. Granted, my medical “degree” only comes from Google and much of that is beyond me. I could get my 14 year old to explain it all to me, but instead I just listened intently when we visited the transplant doctor. He put everything into terms we could understand, and while he didn’t make it sound like a picnic, he did put our hearts and minds at ease.
The stem cell transplant will consist of two stages. Stage One is the “Harvest”. Mom will be her own donor, as this is a much safer option with a greater success rate. But, wait… how can she be her own donor. We have firmly established that her bone marrow has issues! Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here now would we… Good question! Basically, they will zap mom with a powerful chemotherapy drug, giving her quite a bit more than they would use in a typical chemotherapy treatment plan. This drug will seek out and destroy all rapidly multiplying cells. The myeloma cells are rapidly multiplying and so they will be destroyed… Unfortunately, so are hair cells, and the cells that line the digestive track. These cells will be sacrificed as well. So while she will be getting rid of all those myeloma cells, she will also probably be very sick. We expect she will spend about a month in the hospital during this stage.
At this point the will collect her stem cells which should now be free from any nasty cancer cells and store it in the freezer. Fortunately, these stem cells can be collected with a simple blood draw as opposed to going into the hip for her marrow. As a result of the chemo, these stem cells, normally found in the bones will be purged into the blood stream.
Mom will then get a chance to recover from this process. Probably about 2 months… and then they will zap her again.. With an even higher dose of chemo. The point here is to go ahead and kill what’s left of the marrow.. But that’s ok, because she has a clean supply waiting for her in the freezer.. Free of any myeloma cells. It’s the ultimate do over. She will get these sparkly clean stem cells and once back in her body, they will get to work, rapidly multiplying… but in a good way. Once again, she will be in the hospital for a while as a result of this round of chemo, but because they put stem cells back in she should bounce back more quickly.
It is a scary process, but it also has an amazing success rate.. I don’t want to see my mom sick, but I really want to see her well. She is understandably nervous about all this so your prayers for a smooth procedure, with no complications are needed. Prayers for peace would be great too!
I promise I will keep you updated as we get closer transplant time.
