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Don't give up!
Hi, Chic88. About 15 years ago now my nephew (then age 13/14) underwent a mismatched unrelated BMT for Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. Similar sort of story--weeks turned into months that went by with him living on transfusions and having no immunity at all, and then finally his counts started to rise but it turned out to be his own cells. So the transplant was a failure, except for the fact that it did temporarily knock back his leukemia. After about seven months of combined hospitalization or living in a very sheltered situation very close to the hospital, he was allowed to go back home, quite a bit the worse for wear and seriously demoralized. After about a year or two the doctors started to talk about trying a second transplant (and no, they would certainly not have considered trying one immediately), but he had been switched to a then-new med called Gleevec which was keeping the cancer (which had returned along with his own bone marrow) in check, and he made the decision not to subject himself to a second attempt.
The upshot? Today he is happily married to a lovely young woman, gainfully employed, and hoping to start a family. He does have a few side effects from the radiation and Gleevec, but nothing that prevents him from living a rich and full life.
Will this kind of story be your boyfriend's? I can't say but very much hope so. I just wanted to share it as a way of encouraging you to believe that he can indeed overcome this setback. It's a different illness he is facing than the CML my nephew had, and different challenges are involved, but it's also 15 years down the road, and the doctors have a whole new arsenal of treatment techniques that weren't available in 2000/2001.
Best wishes,
Barbara
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