Day 0

Day 0 finally came today. The cells were in the lab this morning and were processed and counted and goodness knows what other checks they have to do, before being delivered to me on the ward at around 14:15. I had to have some pre-meds of Piriton and hydrocortisone to avoid any nasty allergic reactions, and I was given some nerve drug to calm me down as it was agreed that I was beginning to look pretty stressed. I had been feeling really sick after lunch and had been given some dexamethasone (steroid) to help with this, this probably got me all a bit racy and tetchy so they needed tramazepam to bring me back down again, then a heavy dose of piriton meant that I fell asleep while I had a visitor here this afternoon, bit embarrassing, but I think he understood.

So all the worries about medical fitness, donor eligibility, cells being extracted, cells turning up...all gone. Two bags of stem cells flowed steadily into me over the course of just an hour. My view of the cells in the bag is shown above. It looked like a bag of passata. As with the auto transplant the cells were big enough to see with the naked eye, pouring down the tube into my chest. And then...nothing.

I've been told it takes 24 hours for the cells to find their way into the bones, then 2 weeks(ish) to settle and start producing blood for me. Then there is 60-100 days where I remain on immunosuppressants even though the bone marrow is working, to avoid any rejection issues. Then after this time period the immunosuppressants are eased off, and then we wait to see whether the cells are happy together or whether they are going to attack each other. The severity of any reaction is gauged and medication is varied depending on that to avoid any signficant damage to me whilst not suppressing things so much that the new immune system doesn't fight off the Myeloma (which is ultimately what we want). This continues until things settle down (you might be able to tell from that comment that I am not sure what happens after this point but I have read it can be up to two years that the Graft-versus-Host issue may still be signficant).

But I don't think I can end this without stressing again how unbelievably wonderful this day is. A day we never thought we would see as we were told there were no donors. A lady in Germany who does not know me and I do not know her has undergone what is essentially a week of treatment: 5 days to get her body producing stem cells and then eject them from the marrow into the blood, and two days of donating. Yes, the reason the cells were late is that she had to donate twice to get the required number of cells for the transplant to go ahead. She gets no money for this, no recognition (apart from the fact that I am allowed to send a card via Anthony Nolan), and she's probably got a day off work tomorrow before the weekend. And all the transport connections from her to me worked, the cells got delivered, still fresh, and I watched them go down a tube into me earlier today. And now I'm waiting for them to do the business. That is just amazing.

Apparently some transplant patients consider this their second birthday, so every year they have a proper birthday and a born-again-birthday. I think this an excellent idea and I shall be instigating my second birthday party (my other having been already celebrated in April on my proper birthday) for me this time next year. And you're all invited.