[dfantle]

Hi, I've been meaning to write the past few weeks to fill everyone in on my unrelated donor "mini" SCT I had on Jan 29. But well, I've been a bit distracted.

So far all is going well & on Tuesday, day 21, my platelets, white cells and neutrophils were all in NORMAL ranges. So this is really ENGRAFTMENT++, because typically they just need to see your neutrophils above 500 for 3 days to declare you're there. My platelets decided to make their presence known 1st & were normal by day 14, & rose to 315k quickly! During this time my white cells and neutrophils were increasing slowly, the Neuts didn't reach above 500 until sometime over the weekend when they jumped for 290 on Friday, to 2,130 on Monday!! White cells 5,300. Red cells are always expected at week 4 so we expect to see them soon. My platelets have not been in the normal range for 23 years and whites/neutrophils for likely 12 years so its amazing!!

Because of the mini or non myeloablative transplant I had and no complications, I've truly only spent 14 hours at the hospital so far. Just enough time to check in, wait for my cells which arrived at the lovely hour of 12:45 AM (unusual for US donors). Ordered my breakfast and they were ready to kick me out just as it arrived! So far we've been able to make it past week 3 with no fevers so no return trips to the hospital yet , tho I know it could still happen.

The next hurdle will be GVHD, this is not predictable but if there are issues we could start to see signs around day 30 or maybe not for months, or if we're really lucky not at all.

BMB is next week which will tell us a number of things, especially my cellularity which was just 5-10% prior to transplant for all 3 lines.

Overall I feel pretty well. Tired, a bit of nausea off & on.

Cheers,