Donors update

Nick heading to get a PET scan in one of the only two PET scan machines in central Texas.

A little more news on the bone marrow/stem cell donor front:

We learned this week the potential donors are being tested next week and we’re (tentatively) looking at end of July/beginning of August possibly for our transplant, if our potential donor(s) testing work out and are available. Now that we’re in remission, we are essentially just waiting for the donor availability and continuing with various tests we need to do on our end beforehand. In addition to the donor themselves needing to be maximally compatible with Nick’s body and being physically and medically available to donate, the donation and transplant times have to be within 24 hours of each other and the donation has to be timed well within our chemo cycle so Nick’s body is in the recovery phase to best handle the transplant.

Transplant Prep + Process

Leading up to the actual transplant day, Nick will be getting three days of full body radiation and the donor will have a handful of days of prep at the same time where they’re given an injection of a drug called Filgrastim to boost their cell count.

How it works is the injections trigger the donor’s body to overproduce healthy blood-forming cells in the bones and when it gets to a certain amount the excess stem cells are naturally released from the bones into their bloodstream, where they’re removed via a simple process called apheresis which is similar to donating blood or plasma in that the blood is removed and goes directly through a machine separating the stem cells and some white cells from the rest of the blood, which is immediately returned to the donor.

We then expect to receive one to two bags of new, healthy donor stem/white blood cells the next day.