[Jayceechic]

Thank you both for your response as I appreciate any words of comfort.

Neil - I was a previous patient at NIH and was going there for my 3 year cancer-free anniversary checkup when it all hit the fan. I had suspected something was wrong in May/June but had NO idea it would be this. I had my first clue it could be bad during the middle of a 5k race in June when I could not breathe after mile 1 and had to walk/run just to finish. I crossed the finish line and collapsed into tears because I just something bad was going on. Ha ha - was I right.

Anyway, my cancer doctors at NIH passed me over to Dr. Sloand, an MDS specialist, and I've been working with her somewhat to figure this out and see if my brother is a match. Since he's not a match, I'm meeting with her tomorrow and a transplant team from NCI at NIH to consider a pilot study of un-related donor transplants. I'm a lot scared because there are only 25 patients on this study, but I will talk to them. I'm also meeting with Johns Hopkins and trying to get a consultation with MD Anderson.

What's so overwhelming to me is that we (the patient) has to do all of this research without understanding the terminology and we're scared and confused. Then we have to figure out our best course of action and pick a transplant team we hope and pray will get the job done and we can go on to live a long, happy life. It's scary!