July 18, 2023 - The Plan

     I have some new information from Mayo Clinic.   Here’s the plan at the moment.  It is still up for change.
     I am scheduled to return to Mayo near the end of August.  I will have testing for three days to determine if I am a healthy enough candidate for the stem cell transplant.  On the fourth day I am to meet with the physician in charge of the transplant to get the news.
     If I am deemed a candidate, for the next four days I will be given an injection to stimulate the cells in the bone marrow to move into the bloodstream.  This is much better than the old “bone marrow transplant” though the results will hopefully be the same.  Instead of harvesting the cells from the bone marrow, which is terribly painful, the cells are harvested from the blood.
     The next three days the cells will be harvested from my blood.  The procedure is similar to dialysis, except the cells are harvested rather than the blood being cleansed like in dialysis.  Enough cells will be harvested for two transplants in case the first one doesn’t work or for some time down the road.   The cells are frozen and kept until the transplant.
     After the cells are harvested I am to meet with the doctor in charge a second time.  After a rest day I will be given the large dose of chemotherapy followed by another rest day.  Then the stem cell transplant will be done.
     If all goes as planned, the transplant should be about the middle of September.
     We have been told that the roughest days are likely to be the fifth to the fifteenth days after the chemotherapy. 
     If there are no complications we would hopefully return home sometime after the first of October.
     I am not sure I can put into words my feelings about all of this.  As I said in an earlier blog, we do what we have to do for a better shot at living.
     I will say that the sweet peace of Jesus continues in my heart.   We can have peace about circumstances that we’d just as soon avoid.   Somehow I think Jesus felt that about the Cross.