Day -8

Today was a good day despite traffic tripling or quadrupling the time it usually takes to get from home to NIH. I met with plenty of people today about the transplant, but the most important meeting was with the lead transplant doctor. The feedback from him was that, other than cancer obviously, I am in excellent health. Supposedly I have about the best kidneys he has ever seen, and my heart, lungs, and other organs are doing great also! This is great news because it decreases the odds of side effects and of having a positive outcome from the transplant.

I feel like I had a good understanding of the protocol before meeting with him, and the discussion we had was reassuring. He spoke for a good amount of time regarding Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD). That is a disease that affects tranplant recipients as their new cells can become harmful to the existing cells. Apparently about 50% of transplant patients get acute GVHD. That is a GVHD occurence within the first 100 days after transplant. There is also chronic GVHD which occurs further down the road, which affects about 50% as well. The odds of having chronic GVHD are less for those who don't get acute GVHD. I'm hoping to avoid both conditions, because they don't necessarily sound comfortable from what I've read.

The parts of the body that GVHD affect most often are the skin, GI tract, and the liver. The risk of GVHD is that with a suppressed immune system, transplant patients with GVHD aren't prepared to deal with the potential infection that might come along with GVHD. It does have potential for serious problems, but most people with GVHD have their symptoms successfully treated with medication.

Right now I find myself in my hospital room at NIH on my first night away from home. Its kind of odd tonight because there isn't anything going on and nothing planned. I'm just hanging out waiting for tommorow. In the morning I'll have the Hickman line placed in my chest. I've gotten used to having PICC lines placed in my arms to receive chemotherapy, but I fell it will be weird to have a catheter in my chest.

After the line placement, I'll have time to relax for most of the day before beginning hydration in the evening. I'll get IV hydration because one of the two drugs I'll get this week can be especially hard on the bladder. The extra hydration will ensure I'm going to the bathroom often, and preventing bleeding on the walls of my bladder. Yeah...that sounds uncomfortable, so I have no problem peeing often to avoid that.

I found out today that the actual day of transplant will be the 17th of December. That means today is Day -8. With the transplants the negative days are counted down until your transplant day...Day 0, which I've heard others call their re-birthday or something like that. Now I am about ready to get some sleep and to move on to day -7. Its kind of nice to count the days with this process. Each one will just bring me one step closer to being done with this disease forever!