{"id":775,"date":"2016-11-04T14:58:14","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T14:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottysblog.com\/the-yellow-brick-road-to-transplantland\/"},"modified":"2016-11-04T14:58:14","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T14:58:14","slug":"the-yellow-brick-road-to-transplantland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottysblog.com\/home\/the-yellow-brick-road-to-transplantland\/","title":{"rendered":"The Yellow Brick Road to TransplantLand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bugger me &#8211; I think there is the shimmering of a plan in sight &#8211; finally.<\/p>\n<p>Only 9 months into chemo and at last some potential light (if you can call it that!) at the end of what&#39;s been a shitter of a 2016 endless tunnel.<\/p>\n<p>It&#39;s all changed yet again as &#8211; HURRAH BLOODY HURRAH &#8211; I am currently (never a good idea to think what&#39;s true one week, will still be true the following week though) <span style=\"color: #0080ff; font-size: 18pt;\">IN REMISSION!!!!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>It seems that the dream combo of Dara the big drug and Velcade the small drug (well, only in terms of how long they take to administer, it&#39;s funny how you end up seeing them that way) have finally knocked my Paraprotein down to &#39;undetectable&#39; &#8211; and Prof is suddenly sailing like billy-o towards my transplant.<\/p>\n<p>And it now seems to be that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He does want me to harvest my current stem cells, rather than using my 8 year old frozen ones (I always said, chilled was better than frozen)<\/li>\n<li>Which is good news as intuitively the fresh ones will be &#39;better&#39; &#8211; fewer myeloma cells and no 8-years-in-a-freezer dubious niff to them<\/li>\n<li>But also slightly bad news as a stem cell harvest is a 2 week ball ache &#8211; 4 days of GCSF injections to make me hyper-produce stem cells (remember, the process that makes your fingers feel like giant fizzing sausages, and if these weren&#39;t then taken back out of me I would actually explode). Followed by 3-4 long days of about 4-5 hours each day attached to a mega harvesting machine that takes blood out of one arm, through a magic machine, then whacks it back in again. All the while I will be desperate for a wee&#8230; inevitably. But hopefully this will gather enough cells for definitely the upcoming transplant, and enough for one more with luck, to keep in the freezer bank for another day\/year.<\/li>\n<li>And depending on timings, my Stem Cell Transplant would then be mid\/late Jan 2017. Not exactly something I&#39;m looking forward to, but it is the start of the main &#39;thing&#39; that might help me get my life back, like I did after my first transplant. Please, please, please let this one magically do the same thing.<\/li>\n<li>Already the phone is ringing with the hideously long list of things that need doing pre-transplant. I am already booked in for a MUGA GFR test &#8211; heart and kidneys I think &#8211; which seems to take about 5 hours and involve injections and a lot of lying down quietly (not my forte!). Prof is mumbling apologetically about needing to do a Bone Marrow Biopsy &#8211; under sedation this time as I have avoided this like the bloody plague since my first one where some sadistic sod literally used a corkscrew to extract bone marrow from within my spine, while I screamed the hospital down and bit the nurse. And a pile of other little medical joys, such as PET CTs and god knows what else &#8211; it&#39;s a laugh and a half, this bloody cancer gig.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But at least we seem to be underway, and I am desperately hoping the SCT will be the start of something better than the last 2 years have been.<\/p>\n<p>And Jan 2017 will be precisely 8 years since my first SCT &#8211; so I am already inordinately grateful that I am&#0160;<\/p>\n<p>a) still here<\/p>\n<p>b) overall, reasonably healthy, compared to many<\/p>\n<p>c) lucky that I have had minimal side effects from the many months of chemo (besides falling asleep at 9pm most nights, sorry to everyone whose sofas or theatre seats I have dozed off on!)<\/p>\n<p>d) in with a chance of a future &#8211; unlike may of my less fortunate myeloma chums<\/p>\n<p>Will keep you updated &#8211; keep those fingers crossed for a lasting remission &#8211; cheers S x<\/p>\n<p>&#0160;<\/p>\n<p>&#0160;<\/p>\n<p>&#0160;<\/p>\n<p>&#0160;<\/p>\n<p>&#0160;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bugger me &#8211; I think there is the shimmering of a plan in sight &#8211; finally. Only 9 months into chemo and at last some potential light (if you can call it that!) at the end of what&#39;s been a shitter of a 2016 endless tunnel. It&#39;s all changed yet again as &#8211; HURRAH BLOODY [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Yellow Brick Road to TransplantLand - Welcome to Scottys Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scottysblog.com\/home\/the-yellow-brick-road-to-transplantland\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Yellow Brick Road to TransplantLand - Welcome to Scottys Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bugger me &#8211; I think there is the shimmering of a plan in sight &#8211; finally. 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