Chris has an appointment with his Dr. this Friday morning. If his test is negative for cancer the next step he recommends is a bone marrow transplant. We are going to wait until he meets with his new Dr. in Texas on November 9th to make a decision. Before this whole thing started Chris said he wasn’t interested in a bone marrow transplant but is waiting to decide until we have some answers to the tons of questions in our minds.
I googled a bit about bone marrow transplants today and found out that:
– best matches are full blood siblings (Chris has none of these, he is adopted)
– only 1 in 4 recipients get matches from their siblings, the other 3 get matches from the donor bank
– once a match is found it is a minimum 100 day process during which he is highly susceptible to infection, it’s like being super neutropenic
– before he gets the new marrow he has to have very intense chemo to kill all of his existing marrow
– after the transplant he would probably have to start the 8 cycles of chemo over again
I have not posted this stuff on the family/friend blogs because we aren’t ready to share with his parents yet. His mom has told me before that she thinks there is no decision to be made if he needs a transplant, it’s something she thinks he has to do. So we aren’t ready to share with her yet since we don’t know what his decision will be. And it is his decision.
I have told him before that anything he decides I will support, no matter if I agree with it or not. What he consents to have done is the only thing he has any control over in this whole fucking awful mess.
Like I said before no decisions will be made for weeks. For all we know his new Dr. will provide us with a new opinion.
None of this is any type of good news and has only made us have to confront the horrible reality that there is a strong probability he will die from this. I’m not trying to be all doom and gloomy, there is no way to predict the future. But none of this shit is helping his prognosis.
I’m so glad we are already planning on moving and will be there soon and will get to see our Magnus’ sweet face and give him hugs and kisses and hold him close, oh so close to our hearts.
ad astra per aspera 