Sunshine, Heat and Chemotherapy.

Finally, after a lot of anxiety, prayers, tears and scheduling nightmares, William was admitted into the City of Hope yesterday.   William was scheduled to start his chemotherapy last night however, all of the fun we had over the weekend left him a little dehydrated so we spent the night hydrating him and started chemotherapy this morning.

There is so much to tell you about the City of Hope... Where do I begin?  I am so exhausted that I don't think I actually have the energy to write about the facility - I will ask my mom to write a more details entry tomorrow and to include details about the hospital and staff.

I have received a lot of emails and calls asking questions about the upcoming Stem Cell Rescue and the Bone Marrow Transplant. (BMT) The following is an explanation of both....


Medical Talk 101 -as with most things related to cancer, momcologists get most of the information from each other; therefore, the following information is all from another Momcologists blogs. Her son recently went through stem cell rescue and a successfully bone marrow transplant.

WHY IS A BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT NEEDED?
A transplant will be needed because the very intense chemo in this phase of treatment will destroy his bone marrow and hopefully any residual cancer that the chemo did not get.


HOW ARE STEM CELLS RESCUED AND HARVESTED?
After William has completed this round of chemotherapy, he will get daily Neupogen injections to push his stem cells out of his bone marrow and into his blood so they can be collected.


Once William's body is ready give us what we need, a double catheter will be put into a large vein in his groin, and blood will be taken out and the various components of the blood will be separated by density in a centrifuge. The stem cells will be taken and frozen for use in the transplant and the rest of the blood will be put back in through the catheter. The procedure is done under local anesthesia and should take 4-5 hours. Most of the time they're able to get enough stem cells the first day, but it is possible he'll need to have more cells collected during a second round. PLEASE Pray that we only need to do this once!!!


BONE MARROW TRANSPLANT, HOW IT WORKS:
Once William is done with his high dose chemotherapy, his bone marrow willl be non existent.  Basically, if you were to look inside the bones, they would be empty (picture a dead sea sponge),all of the marrow substance is gone, dead.  At this time the stem cells that were harvested are now transplanted back into the body and find their way back to the marrow space to engraft into the bone and start reproducing themselves and eventually produce daughter cells (the white and red blood cells, platelets, etc.). Oh, and the stem cells are specifically bone marrow stem cells and they have receptors so when the blood passes through the bone marrow space, the specific stem cells know to attach to the bone while the rest of the blood cells and particles continue right on through. Isn't that amazing?

WHAT IS ENGRAFTMENT?

It means the stem cells found their way back to the marrow space, attached themselves to the bone and replicated themselves enough to fill the space and then start to produce the daughter cells (white and red blood cells, platelets). Think of it like a factory (the bone marrow space). You have to spend time hiring employees (stem cells) to fill the factory. When you have enough employees you can start production on your product list (white and red blood cells, platelets). Over time, the employees become stronger and more efficient and can more easily negotiate production malfunctions (need for transfusions, infections).



Please pray that William's body is strong enough to give us enough Stem Cells! Please pray that one one harvest procedure is necessary! Please pray that God continues to heal my little boy's body.. Please pray for all of the other DSRCT patients!

Keep on Keepin on.
Live Strong in God's promise to answer our prayers.