The Main Event
It's been over a month since my stem cell transplant so I guess it's time to try to sum it all up for a blog post. First of all I'm happy to say that I survived. It was an experience that I don't particularly care to repeat (even though I may have to in a few years) but now that I'm on the other end it wasn't too scary. Here's what happened... The day before the actual transplant I got a high dose of chemotherapy. The dose is so high that the stem cell transplant is actually necessary to reboot your immune system. In fact, most, if not all, of the unpleasantness to follow is a result of the chemotherapy. The transplant itself was remarkably quick and simple. I was in a room with a bed, a nurse, a doctor and a technician. They defrosted my frozen stem cells (looked like an ordinary bag of blood) and then hung it from a hook on the ceiling. The bag was attached to my central line (a kind of permanent IV in my chest) and then gravity-fed into me. It felt we...