Bone Marrow Transplant

For many of you, this may come as a surprise and for others this is old news, but my bone marrow transplant took place on December 23. My little brother flew home from his mission to be my donor. Isn't that just so nice of him. Due to the fact that I got new bone marrow I also received a new birthday. I'm so excited about this! My husband and I now have two reasons to celebrate my birth. My original birthday on Feb 24 and now my bone marrow birthday Dec 23.


The transplant itself is just a simple blood transfusion.
Hanging on the IV pole is the bag of donated bone marrow from Andrew. Andrew checked into the hospital at 6 am. He was taken into surgery around 7 am and was in my room by around eleven. Poor kid, he was and still is pretty sore. They laid him on a table (after putting him under) and drilled a hole through each of his hip bones in order to extract the marrow. The Nurse practitioner told me that he had extremely hard bones, but that his bone marrow looked amazing. I feel that it's the missionary factor that made the marrow so amazing.

Luckily for me, Andrew and I are the same blood type. This allowed me to be alert and coherent during the transfusion.

The Child life crew, the bone marrow doctors and any staff available participated in my celebration. they came into the room bearing gifts and the greatest version of happy birthday that one would ever hear. It was so loud and off key everyone could not help but smile and laugh. The bone marrow staff is amazing and I am ever so grateful.



























Besides the hospital staff, Kade's and my, families were there to help bring in the big moment. I am so grateful for all the support that was given. Here are some photos of them


It took roughly four hours for the transfusion to be complete. They say it usually takes about 2 hours, but like I said before Andrew's bone marrow was amazing. I'm still feeling well and we are on day 4. The doctor's say that that is a good sign.

I am in the hospital until graft vs. host appears. This usually appears after the stage of in-graftment (meaning the new cells have migrated into my bone marrow spaces). Since it was a sibling donor, this should occur between 17-21 days. We have a nice little envelope full of money attached to a calendar (each person that wanted to make a guess as to when in-graftment will take place, put money in the envelope and then put their name on the calendar) I get to keep all the money and they get the "glory" of picking the magic day.

Well, I think I have informed everyone on this matter well enough. My next post will be about Christmas.

Transplant here we come!

Well wed Dec 16 is the official check in date to start radiation in preparation to starting the bone marrow transplant. I have three days, of two sessions, of full body radiation. I also have three days of chemo (lucky for me these are my last days of chemo!)

Andrew is home and I think he is completely weirded out by being home. He walks around with this funny expression on his face- like the cat who ate the cannery. It's so cute. I'm ever so grateful that he did not have any parasites or infections that needed to be taken care of.

Well, Kade and I have celebrated Christmas with both sets of family now due to the fact that we are unaware of how with it I will be after the transplant. The transplant is still set for the 23 of December. I was told that on that day there will be a large party to celebrate my "new birthday"