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Seeking Michigan Cancer Facility to Coordinate Post-BMT Care with Mayo
Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) & CAR-T Cell Therapy | Last Active: Nov 8 8:34am | Replies (4)Comment receiving replies
Thanks, Lori, and thank you for your kind reply.
My parents currently live in the northern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, and their local hospital only provides infusions and blood draws for my dad between treatments. Unfortunately, they don’t have an oncology/hematology department equipped to handle his AML care. As a result, my dad travels to Detroit—about a 4.5-hour drive—for more specialized procedures like bone marrow biopsies, consolidation treatments, and so on. The cancer center in Detroit is excellent and can perform his bone marrow transplant (BMT), but my parents don’t have a support system in the area, and there are limited housing options for extended stays. Since they are able to perform the BMT at the Detroit facility, I suspect the decision to not coordinate care with another facility is financially motivated—trying to retain payment for expensive procedures rather than losing a patient to another hospital.
I work for Mayo Clinic and have the most flexibility of my siblings to help with his care, so we wanted to explore the option of him getting the procedure in Rochester, MN. However, without a facility in Michigan that can help with his ongoing AML care when he is released, Mayo Clinic would not be a viable option.
Replies to "Thanks, Lori, and thank you for your kind reply. My parents currently live in the northern..."
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I’m fairly certain the post BMT care can be accomplished on home turf for your dad. What I would suggest is contacting your dad’s local hospital/lab/infusion center to see if they will also accept blood draw requests from Mayo for his post BMT care.
Since your dad is having a BMT, his AML journey will basically have ended. His oncologist will only be doing cursory followups. So there’s no reason for your dad to return to Detroit for post BMT followup blood draws.
If his local hospital is already doing labs and infusions for his Detroit oncologist for his AML treatment, there shouldn’t be an issue for them to preform the same type of care for your dad following his BMT. It is mostly just routine blood work that’s required, results being faxed to Mayo (or Epix). Most clinics are happy to work with Mayo. As you know from working there, the name Mayo carries a lot of weight. ☺️
His local clinic is so much more convenient than traveling the 4.5 hours back to Detroit solely for those blood tests anyway. There may be as many as 2-3 per week initially for a couple of weeks. So being close to home is best! If there are any issues that require more care, Mayo simply sends orders to your dad’s local hospital so he can be admitted or have more tests ordered, etc.. If there are tests that the local lab can’t process, Mayo sends transport boxes for tubes to be processed back at Mayo…they go above and beyond to make things easy for home clinics to comply.
In the event of an emergency and transplant related, Mayo would send transport to get your dad back to the ‘mother ship’ asap. All the orders will come from Mayo…they just need someone to do the blood work, send results and be the boots on the ground.
It’s wonderful that you work for Mayo and can help your mom and dad out through this odyssey with caregiving. The BMT teams there are outstanding! And, we have a great support group of members in Connect, along with myself, who have had bone marrow transplants. We’re here to help with whatever questions or concerns you might have. Let me know what I can do to help. But first, have your dad/mom contact his local hospital …I think you’ll find they’re willing to help him out so he can get this BMT show on the road. Will you let me know what you find out please?