[dfantle]

Hi AA Teen, regarding the donor. They can back out anytime here as well, but the 6 month guarantee just means their name stays out of the donor pool for 6 months so they are not available to other potential patients during this time period.

My match was a 10/10 & same blood type. However even with this good of a match, at my age GVHD risk is much higher than your niece. I was very lucky that I only had minor oral GVHD starting around 3-4 months post (I never noticed it, but my transplant dentist saw a few very minor symptoms). I have had some new mild GVHD which appeared just at my 1year anniversary. This is all very manageable, however.

My understanding is some countries only use an 8 point scoring system, where 8/8 is considered a perfect match, though I do not know what the differences are.

Regarding deciding when may be an important factor to look at to decide to forward with Transplant or not. My doctor supported my decision to wait longer for the ATG to work before moving forward with transplant as long as I stayed healthy. However, although I wasn't getting sick I started getting some minor skin infections & when this happened my white cells did not increase to fight the infection as they are supposed to & instead dropped-which doesn't happen to most AA patients. This is when we started talking about my needing transplant.