My next procedure is going to be a cord blood transplant.

A cord

Cord blood transplant, yes, which is
What does that mean?

This is the latest thing that’s come from America, and it’s basically, what they’re finding is that they treated a lot of children that have got leukaemias and cancers using this method, and basically they take the blood out of a newborn baby’s umbilical cord and they find that it is rich with stem cells and, you know, which is good for fighting off the cancers. So they use that as a transplant now instead of bone marrow. And they tried it on adults and they found than the results were quite good as well. They said to me that a bone marrow transplant wasn’t an option with me because I’d had quite a lot of treatment they didn’t feel that my body would be up to having an unrelated donor. I’ve got a brother that they tested but unfortunately he wasn’t a full match, so once they go with a brother or sister, if they’re not a match then the next step is an unrelated donor. And at that time I wasn’t in a, you know, they felt I wasn’t in a position for me to survive a bone marrow transplant using an unrelated donor, so that wasn’t really an option. And that was a year ago.

But now because I’ve, you know, a combination of the rituximab and the Zevalin has seemed to work quite well, I’m quite healthy at the moment and they feel I’m in a good position to have this cord blood transplant. So I’ve just recently been to see my consultant and I’m going back in a couple of weeks to get a date that I’m going into hospital to have this transplant, which I believe is probably Easter.

So is that using your own bone marrow?

No this is actually using, this is using a baby’s umbilical cord’s blood that they get.

I’ve not heard of that at all.

No it’s a new procedure that’s, and in fact I think for my type of cancer I’m probably going to be the third person in the UK to have it.

Really?

Yes.

Gosh.

So it’s that new.

Well I might have to come back and see you again.

Yes, so it has got risks, obviously, you know, my consultant was saying that it’s fairly new and, you know, he gave me all the procedures and he had to give me all the information that could go wrong. And I’m going to be quite ill for quite a while when I come out of hospital, probably going to be in there for about six weeks in isolation and I can just, you know, I’m probably going to get all the, catch all the infections and all the procedures that go along with having a transplant, like my body could reject it, and so I’ve got a long, I think after this it’s going to be quite a long journey this year with me being ill again after being quite well at the moment. So I haven’t made up my mind yet, you know, I’ve got, I’m going back to see him in a couple of weeks and hopefully by then he’ll have checked just to make sure that the cord is a perfect match for me, which it is at the moment.

So they still have to match it?

Yes it’s still got to be a match, but it’s not as critical as a bone marrow, you know, they find that because the, in one cord it’s quite rich with stem cells, and the only thing with usin

So they then said to me that, What we’re going to do is, after you’ve had this three months aggressive treatment, we are going to consider you for a stem cell transplan, and obviously they went into this in great detail, I’ve got all the leaflets and booklets from different associations, and went into it. And basically the idea of this is that they take your own stem cells out of your body, you go into, it’s called harvesting, where they take your blood out and it goes through like a dialysis machine and it separates your blood and it takes your stem cells out and separates it into its own bag. And they then can store this. This took two days and I was, it was four hours each day for two days, you know, so they get enough stem cells, I think they need a certain amount. They then was able to freeze the stem cells, but this was in the November of 2001, and they then geared me up to have the actual stem cell transplant in the January of 2002, so it was all going to happen really quickly. So I was like then gearing myself up to be admitted to hospital.

I then went into, the January came, I’d had the harvesting okay, things were going pretty well, I was quite well, I’d just had some, the treatment that I had previously had got rid of most of the lumps that I had, so the disease was minimal, but just to make sure of that I had to have a really aggressive regimen of treatment once I was in hospital for getting ready for the transplant. So that was quite aggressive treatment for a whole week where they just, you know, they’ve literally got to suppress your immune system, so you’re open to infections. I had that for a week and then on the seventh day they then gave me my stem cells back. And the reason for this is, their view is that once your body has been completely, you know, blasted with the chemotherapy, they give you your stem cells back and then it can start growing again, you need blood cells and that can start growing. So that was the theory and that’s what happened.

And so I was in hospital for about three weeks and then I came home, and I was on, I had to be really careful, you know, catching infection, because I was still, my immune system was still quite low and it was going to take a good six months for it to recover, so I was on all different drugs, you know, to help me fight off infections. And I did have spells where I had to, I was readmitted to hospital, which is normal after a procedure like that. And so as far as I know that this stem cells transplant would give me a good ten years in remission. So I came home and I went for checks and they said, Yes you’re in remissio, and, you know, it was, like, six months later then I started going back to work and I joined the gym again, and I was getting myself fit and healthy and I had a really good period of time where I felt really good, you know, that this has gone.