Well, I better get this blog going.

Three weeks ago, my doctor still did not have a matching marrow donor. There are over 11 million registered marrow donors in the world and I do not have anyone that matches at least 7 out of 10 alleles (tissue typing numbers), the minimum number needed to match to perform a marrow transplant to cure my non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

But my doctor did have two baby cord units that she was looking at. One cord was from the Belgium cord bank and one was from the Australian cord bank. The cords have to be a minimum of 4 out of 6 alleles to me. The cords do not have to be 7 out of 10 like adult marrow since the baby stem cells are immature, more flexible and do not have as memory.

The tail of each cord was mailed to the City of Hope for confirmation testing. The following is a matching of my six numbers (A, B, DRB1 - two numbers for each) with the two cords:


Steve (my #'s) A (0301 / 3303) B (3801 / 5101) DRB1 (1201 / 1302)

Belgium Cord A (0301 /3303) B (5801 /5101) DRB1 (0101 /1302)

Australian Cord A (03xx / 33xx) B (58xx /51xx) DRB1 (1505 / 1302)

The Belgium Cord is one year old (born in 2007) and the Australian Cord is 10 years old (born in 1998). The Australian Cord has a Middle Eastern background.

Each cord was 4 of 6 to me and 5 of 6 to each other. Both frozen cords were mailed to the City of Hope Hospital with arrival of both cords completed on December 10, 2008.

On December 11, 2008, I was admitted to the City of Hope Hospital in Duarte, CA to start my Matched Unrelated Multiple Cord Blood Transplantation. To get the body ready to accept the new stem cells from the cords and not attack them, the regimen consists of one day of a very strong chemotherapy drug, Cytoxan; five days of a moderate chemotherapy drug, Fludarabine; two days of anti-rejection drugs (Cyclosporin and Mycophenolate Mofetil (MMF / Cellcept); and one single dose of 200 centiGrays (cGy) of total body irradiation (TBI).

As part of my regimen, I would receive a single dose of total body irradiation (TBI) to help lower my immune system and prepare my body for accepting the new baby stem cells. I had a radiation consultation to measure me for the event which would occur the following week on December 17th. They laid me next to the huge linear accelerator which would shoot electrons into my body and measured the distance of my body to the machine at several points (head, throat, chest, waist, knee and foot) and the thickness of my body in those areas that the electrons would have to enter. I hope they did they measurements correct. I do not want to lose an eye or a toe.

So far, I have been in the hospital for six days. Tomorrow, I receive the radiation and then Thursday I receive the double cord transplantation. I've been nauseous on and off due to the chemo and the hospital food quality.

That's it for now. I am going to rest a bit! Please pray that all goes well!