12/17/10

Man this blog stuff can be difficult to keep up on sometimes!

It has been crazy busy lately. We went to Salt Lake on Tuesday night. And our fun filled day began early Wednesday 12/15. Jeremie started with giving about 15 vials of blood to test for everything under the sun. Then we were magically whisked away to EKG/ECHO. That turned out well. Then we went for some adventurous times with bilateral bone marrow biopsies. Have I said I am married to an amazing man yet? Holy cow! What a brave person. Only one swear word during the procedure! They were able to obtain the magical fluid aspirate, and obtained two magnificent pieces of bone for biopsy :-)

We then went to eat (finally) both of us had not eaten the whole day! We didn't get out of LDS until 5:30. Then we went back to our gross hotel. By the way I'm never listening to my sweet husbands suggestion of finding a hotel room "on foothill" again! That was horrible!

Thursday was even more crazy. We sat down with a nurse who decided at this stage in our game to tell us what to expect. Huh??? Jeremie has been admitted 5 times! Do we really need this now? Seriously I almost reached across the table to strangle her. I know it is her job but this would have been helpful 5 months ago! Then we got to have a consult with one of our oncologists who laid it all out for us.

It is super scary to hear that they are going to wipe out your husbands bone marrow...FOREVER! I didn't let that totally sink in until this trip. This is forever, it will not "grow" back. I guess this is the point. This is why it is called a transplant. They kill one organ and replace it with another. I don't know why,but it is hitting me why this is so incredibly dangerous. If the "transplant" or graft doesn't take, that is it. I guess that is why there is a 5-15% mortality with just the transplant process. YUCK!

They told us that one of the cord blood donations came from a little boy who is A positive, and the other donation came from a little girl who is O positive. For a little while Jeremie will look like he has three different blood types!!! Isn't that amazing?! I'm so thankful for their parents for donating their cord blood, what a gift. I wish I did the same thing! One of the cord blood stem cell donations will "win" out become the dominating immune system.

 It takes on average 21-42 days for the transplant of stem cells to engraft. Jeremie will be started on immuno-suppressants right before the transplant. Then will be monitored for graft vs host disease. We are told we want a little of this to happen. This is when the transplanted cells "attack" the host's cells. This is what will keep leukemia away. They will not recognize those cells as self, and will destroy the leukemia cells. Man, it is so incredible that we do this stuff!

Jeremie's 100 days will begin on the day of transplant. He will be expected to be in Salt Lake for this minimum of days. I'm not looking forward to it. I'm sort of thinking about it, but not really. I'm pulling a Scarlett O'Hara "I will think about that tomorrow".

Our Thursday ended with a lumbar puncture with chemotherapy and a blood patch. Aaaahhh another cure for his horrible headache. Now I just can't sit on him ;-) We left last night around 8:30 p.m. and didn't get home until well after midnight. So happy to be home. He is doing great. Feeling great. Numbers (neutrophils, platelets and hematocrit) are all climbing. This last round of induction chemotherapy didn't make his hair fall out. So he looks fabulous! Of course radiation will change that! Every bloody hair will fall out. Eyebrows and eye lashes included. Jeremie also has four new tattoo's on his back :-( this marks where they need the radiation to go.

Well we are hoping that he continues to feel well and we can enjoy the next 13 days together as a family. Each day a gift.

By the way...thank you to all of those who have blessed my family this holiday season. I can't believe the amazing people I live by, work with and don't even know who have chosen to help our family during Christmas. Through all of this scary stuff, all I feel is the love, support and prayers of everyone around us. It truly gives us strength and is humbling to know we are so loved and thought of.