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Preparing for consultation & BMT transplant

Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) & CAR-T Cell Therapy | Last Active: Mar 13 3:39pm | Replies (41)
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@anitasharma

First of all appreciation for your Reply. I am thankful you replied so well each and everything seems to be good . Sorry In a hurry, I written AML whereas the Correct Diagnosed is Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). Thankyou for your kind words and motivational experience .
Allogenic stem cell transplant Yes this is recommended by Doctors. He is coming home after a month .Doctors wanted to test again after 3 weeks for the Bone Marrow and after the results they are Confirming weather BMT is required for him or not but they said 50% chances. I am away from my Country (India) with two kids and Husband here in Canada for almost 2 years now. He has just Diagnosed in Last month .Its a tough time but we want to fight for him. I would also like to know about GCSF (granulocyte colony stimulating factor) as I heard its for Donor and it makes me little scary . Thankyou and Stay Blessed always .

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Replies to "First of all appreciation for your Reply. I am thankful you replied so well each and..."
Lori, Volunteer Mentor | @loribmt | Feb 20 2:41pm

Oh goodness, @anitasharma, you have a lot on your mind right now! It can’t be easy being so far from home, away from the support of family and friends with your husband’s medical crisis and taking care of your children. It does sound as though your husband is getting excellent medical care and advice.
We’ll wait for the confirmation of the BMT and then we can talk more about that. In the mean time, I’ll try to put your mind at rest about your son being the donor. Yes, he most likely would be given a GCSF medication to ‘push’ the production of more blood cells to be donated for your husband’s transplant. This medication, such as Neulasta,(there are others) is generally used for cancer patients who have undergone chemo to help replenish their neutrophils quickly to protect them from infection. Other patients who have low white blood counts also use this to treat that condition. Your husband may have had this after his chemo treatments.

I’ve had several injections of Neulasta myself and it worked effectively. The only short-lived side effect I had was bone pain but it was handled with daily doses of a common over the counter antihistamine called Claritin. (Taken daily for several days following the injection).

For your son, this isn’t a long term application. He will have only enough to stimulate the cells for the collection and should be a minimal risk for anything harmful for him. This is pretty routine for cell collection.
There is another option for donor cells…that being finding a donor on the international bone marrow registry. There are over 41 Million people globally on the registry. Your husband’s doctors can also utilize that source if your son isn’t a match or if you’re concerned for your son’s safety. However, strangers are doing this for people they’ve never met, in increasing numbers. If it were too dangerous I don’t think they would go through with it. I’m grateful every day for my (then) 20 year old male donor (that was 6 years ago).

We’ll hope for the best with the biopsy in 3 weeks. Not everyone with ALL requires a transplant. But if your husband does, they can be absolute life savers.
Do you have a support system around you with family or is everyone back in India? Is there a possibility of your husband having his transplant back home in India where you’d have more support?

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