Proceeding with a Bone Marrow Transplant
A few days ago I got the phone call I was hoping for – We are proceeding with a bone marrow transplant! An autologous bone marrow transplant is a procedure which may give me a chance at growing a new and healthy immune system (capable of fighting the cancer) from stem cells previously collected from my blood.
When I first started chemotherapy in August the hope was that it would suppress my lymphoma enough that I could safely proceed with the transplant. While the chemotherapy regimen used (CHOP) was highly effective at suppressing most of my cancer, a patch of highly active lymphoma near my left arm did not respond to the chemotherapy (it actually grew during treatment!) and the bone marrow transplant (initially scheduled for January) was cancelled.
Several weeks of daily radiation treatment was ordered that focused on the active cancer that remained. Radiation treatment turned out to be highly effective at suppressing the lymphoma at that site, but a CT taken near the end of treatment raised the suspicion that the lymphoma was coming back elsewhere in my chest (a situation which would take a bone marrow transplant off the table again). A decision was made to take a few weeks off of treatment then follow-up with a new CT to see if the cancer was still growing. For the last few weeks I didn’t know if I would be proceeding with a bone marrow transplant, starting-up a different chemotherapy regimen (GDP), or pursuing immunotherapy (CAR T). I had the follow-up CT a few days ago and the lymph nodes in my chest have stabilized, so we are proceeding with transplant. I waited to update this web page until I knew with confidence what the next step of my treatment was going to be.
The last few weeks were a nice vacation from cancer treatment. I enjoyed putting a little bit of time back into some of the activities that I had to put down when I began treatment last year (programming, electronics, and YouTube). I even grew back a little hair! I know the transplant process (which starts next Wednesday) will be rough (with much higher doses of chemotherapy than before), but I’m excited to be moving forward with treatment. My scheduled transplant day (when I’ll actually receive the stem cells which will grow my new immune system) is March 27, 2019. I hope I’ll be able to share a positive update sometime around then!
