Engraftment

We've all so looked forward to Day Zero and my transplant. So we got past that. Now what? They tell me this will be the hard part. My bone marrow was ablated with the chemo, so it is gone, making no blood. Now I take lots of anti-rejection drugs every day. And every day we wait for engraftment. Engraftment is when the cells from my wonderful donor take up residence in my bones and start producing blood cells. And we watch for Graft vs Host Disease. With my type of transplant engraftment is looked for around Day 21, though it has been known to happen as early as Day 14.

Because I have nothing making blood, I have to get regular transfusions of both red cells and platelets. I got red cells in the hospital Sunday (Day 1) and have been getting platelet transfusions every day. The platelets have not been holding. Preferably I would not need transfusions every day, but rather every third or fourth day. Before today's transfusion my count was 10. After the transfusion the count was 37. That is an excellent bump, so we hope it will not be back to 10 tomorrow. Have to totally wait for engraftement for any white cells (including those all important neutrophils).

Every day they check me by looking at my skin and such for signs of Graft vs Host Disease. It's really early for that, though. The doc says I want just a little bit of that so that the MDS won't come back, but too much would be bad. So for now it is waiting and a balancing act.

Positive thinking!!!