Good morning, Gretchen. By my reckoning, if your SCT is Wednesday, today is your last day of conditioning? Tomorrow is a day of rest and fluids with Wednesday being the big day, unless your protocol is different. Are your cells fresh or frozen? Mine were fresh, but by the time they arrived at 8PM at the airport and went through processing at the lab, I didn’t receive them until 11:15 that evening. By then my husband and daughter had drifted back to the hotel and my new B-day was celebrated with my two transplant nurses. LOL. I slept through the 15 minute infusion. Woke up with one of the nurses gently rubbing my arm to tell me Happy Birthday and give me a ‘birth certificate’.
I’m happy you’re still doing well with the chemo. My initial experience was that of a person falling from a 20 story building, reaching the 10 level and saying, “so far, so good”. LOL
What was your treatment for MDS? I’m not familiar with with it so not sure if you went through chemo treatments for that. If so, your down days will be as they were mid cycle after chemo when in the neutropenic stage with extreme weakness and tiredness. Maybe a bit more intense as the conditioning for the SCT is aggressive to clear your bone marrow of any disease or cancer and the chemo also suppresses the immune system to allow for engraftment of the new stem cells.
So don’t be harsh on yourself when you feel weak or tired. This is not something you can rush through physically. There’s so much going on as your body recovers from the conditioning and hosting an entirely new immune system. All of that saps your energy as your body remodels from the trauma. Honestly, there were a couple of days when I lived 5 minutes at a time. I certainly remember days in the first month feeling so tired but needing to shower. By the time I had applied the Aqua barrier on my Hickman I was too exhausted to actually get under the water! I was lucky just to run a washcloth over my face! But here I am, a little more than a year later and I’m very much back to my former life before AML and transplant. I walked 8 miles yesterday!
Just for fun I pictured my new cells as little minions running around, giggling as they found a new home in my bones! I just needed to lie still and let them do their job. ☺️ (Later on, with some GVHD issues, there are days I’ve imagined them as a gang of thugs just looking for trouble! LOL). Wishing you the very best through all of this! Your positive attitude will take you far. Lori.

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