Hanging In There

Wednesday was a hard day. Terry and Alyce met for over 3 hours with doctors from the UAB Bone Marrow Transplant unit. They were supposed to meet with Dr. Vaughan but instead saw a foreign doctor who was a bit hard to understand. He felt Terry needed to proceed pretty quickly with the BMT. He is scheduled for next Tuesday to have a number of preliminary tests and they would like to begin chemo at UAB by the middle of May with a tentative date of transplant on June 2nd. UAB called me and have emailed me numerous forms to complete and I am scheduled to meet with Dr. Vaughan this coming Monday. I will also be having blood tests, EKG and chest X-ray in preparation of being the Donor. If all goes as tentatively planned, I would begin daily shots at UAB on Monday, May 28th through May 31 and would have a catheter inserted in my neck. On June 1, I would be in the BMT unit where they would hook me to a machine that would process my blood, taking out the Stem cells and sending the rest back into my body. It would probably take 4 to 6 hours. Terry and I are both O-Positive blood type, but he was told that after the transplant, if I had a different type from him, he would then be that type. Even though preliminary tests have shown me to be a perfect match, if for some reason his body rejects my blood it could be fatal to him. They have to tell you all the negative stuff, but we are trying to think positive because we know that God is still in control and he is listening to the many prayers on our behalf. I tried to lighten the moment a bit yesterday when we met to talk about all this by asking Terry if he thought I should stop taking my hormone pills!! He may go from a bass voice to soprano!! Today they met with Dr. Yeilding and he said the Bone Marrow test showed still 7% cancer cells and that needs to be down to 4% before the transplant can go forward. He was going to consult with Dr. Vaughan and get back with them tomorrow. Sooooooooo for now we are "Hanging in there". If you would like to learn a little more about Bone Marrow Transplants, I found a web site www.marrow.org Please continue to lift us in prayer. We love you all.