[dfantle]

It was a difficult choice for me. I kept hoping the ATG would work and wanted to wait a little longer to see if it would. For me, though, 3 months after my ATG although initially my counts had started improving, I ended up with a small skin infection and my counts crashed again. Took the full round of antibiotics but 1 month later it was back, and again 6 weeks later. My Dr told me she would have been OK with me waiting if I hadn't had the infections but the infections made the risk too great, and I was fortunate to have a perfectly matched unrelated donor. So for me the infections were the driving factor.

I'm in my early 50s so the protocol for this age was a "Mini" SCT. I'm now 3 months post transplant and all is going well. My 28 day post transplant bone marrow biopsy looked so good and my blood counts were so good the team didn't even do the 60 day biopsy. I had my 84 day bone marrow biopsy last week and the results show my bone marrow is now normal. Everything looks healthy and my cellularity is normal for all 3 cell lines.

My platelets and white cells/neutrophils have been at normal levels since 2 & 3 weeks post transplant. Red cells continue to improve with the last transfusion lasting 5 weeks. (Red cells are the last to normalize and can take months post transplant). So far so good!!