[PaulS]

Hi - Good question to ask your doctors - if they aren't too worried than you shouldn't be.

I did not have a haplo/chord - but did consider it until we found a matched donor.

My transplant was also bone marrow - not stem cells.

From what I learned about the haplo transplant- it does generally take longer than a conventional transplant - bone marrow transplants also take longer than peripheral blood stem cells. In my case the number of stem cells harvested was about half what they would normally prefer - and it took me quite a while to engraft and start making my own blood cells - I can't remember exactly how long, but 16 days doesn't sound too bad. After 140+ days and some GVHD my counts have really just started to go up. At one point (maybe after a couple of weeks) they were considering asking the donor for more stem cells, which i really did not want to do - and fortunately didn't need. I also had myelofibrosis which also slowed things down -

With umbilical stem cells the number of stem cells can also be relatively small - and I understand the early phases can be difficult and take a while - but the risk of graft v. host is very small and the ultimate outcomes can be very good. As I'm learning - whatever kind of transplant - one has to learn patience - nothing happens as fast as you'd like.

Hang in there -

Best,
Paul