Probably be home for Christmas

It now looks like my efforts to get rewired will be delayed until January.

Cindy says she was contacted by the NMDP Thursday. They told her that the donor has an appointment for testing Dec 13, no other details were provided to her. This news comes after Cindy told me a couple weeks ago that the donor had gone in for testing a week earlier. Cindy speculates that the donor may have had an active cold or flu virus in November. I have all kinds of questions but there are few answers. Cindy scheduled a check-up visit with her and my doctor this coming Wed. So, I'll try to get a better feel for the whole donor scheduling process then. I suspect that this is just the way the NMDP works. We have to assume they are acting for the good of both the patient and the donor.

I'm thinking that if the donor gets tested Dec 13 then the test results won't be ready until a week later. The NMDP will notify the donor close to Dec 19 that he is ready to donate. The donation process requires the donor to visit their local hospital for a quick shot 4 days in a row. On the 5th day the donor visits the hospital one last time for a few hours as his blood, now teeming with his myeloid stem cells is filtered through a machine which harvests the cells. I don't know how large of an imposition this entire process may be on the donors holiday plans. Example: how far must the donor drive to get to a certified donation hospital?
So I'm guessing the donor will not want to schedule the procedure until after the new year. But I'll go whenever I'm called. Approximately the same day the donor gets his first shot I will start my chemo preparation and be hospitalized.

The donor delay is a mixed blessing. There has been and continues to be risk associated with delaying a stem cell transplant. However, during yesterday's transfusion as I sat in the chemo recliner and pondered things, I once again had to look no farther than the chairs next to me to know that I should not complain about -anything. On my right, a very nice middle aged lady with incurable bone cancer, on my left a wonderful older gentleman with leukemia. In the other chair was a middle aged man that I think was getting a dialysis flush. He may have renal cancer. I know the names of some of the people I meet in those recliners. I've seen some several times. There are those I used to see often but have disappeared. I don't want to ask the nurses about their whereabouts.

I am very happy to be able to share this Christmas with my family at home. It had been shaping up that I was going to be in the hospital over Christmas and New Years. This is the second Christmas that I have had to contemplate possibly being my last. It is a very strange thought.

There are at least 2 posts that I want to write this month. One post will be to thank all of you who read this. I realize that the subject matter of this blog is difficult. The other post will be a light hearted, easy to read attempt to explain what MDS does inside the body, and how a new set of myeloid stem cells from a very closely matched donor angel can quickly 'fix' the problem.