It's Day Minus 10

After 5 pm mass we headed to MDA and Luke was admitted. Upon arrival his singular priority was to set up his steel pedal guitar. He was started on IV fluids. Tomorrow and Tuesday it's continued IV's to optimize his system chemistry for chemo and further testing. The major testing is to check his sensitivity to one of the two chemo's he will be given to kill off his bone marrow. The one chemo can cause seizures. Probability is low but none the less they want to check. Wednesday will be the first of four consecutive days of chemo. Last day of chemo will be Saturday after which they let the chemo do its thing for two more days. Tuesday the 10th Luke will receive Kendall's bone marrow. The 10th is day "0" on the bone marrow transplant calendar. Everything after Tuesday is referenced to day zero. After the chemo Luke will have no ability to make his own blood cells, red, white or platelets. With no ability to make blood cells Luke will receive platelet and red cells transfusions. The hope is that within 10-14 days of receiving Kendall's bone marrow he will start producing white blood cells from the transplant. Along with the production of blood cells, they will also be looking for signs of graft to host disease. Its the same issue with organ transplants, the body sees something foreign and begins to reject the transplanted organ. For a BMT they watch the liver, kidneys and digestive system. It's going to be a long process. The transplant team has a 100 day calendar. For this initial phase Luke will probably be in MDA until after the 1st of the year. He is going to be in isolation. Mask and gloves and avoiding physical contact with everyone. Following discharge he's been told to expect being in clinic 3 days a week for a month. After transplant Luke has been told repeatedly moving around is critical. The last thing they want to see is pneumonia and the best way to keep that from happening is to push the exercise. This evening we meet Todd. He's 25 and received his BMT November 20. His donor was his brother. He confirmed chemo was a bitch and with no blood cell production energy level sucks. He was getting after it though as we met him walking the halls. Luke is ready to go. He will be active on Face Book. His email address is lucasdnovick@gamil.com. Please feel free to contact him. If you want to send him anything your can send to or drop it by the house and I will get it down to MDA. Take care and Luck Feukemia Dave