Moving along; Donor identified and transplant date set for Nov. 16th.
Treatment plan is coming together. I’m scheduled for a transplant date of Nov. 16 th . This is preceded by two weeks of radiation treatment in early November. Some good news is that they found a donor! She is a 10/10 HLA match and 24-years old—younger stem cells are preferred—and lives in Europe. This is really good news, expected news, but good news. People of European descent have a high probability of finding a match in the registry just because there is more participation. Finding a donor so quickly wasn’t always the case: in the past people used to wait and wait for a donor, but now with the registry and the amount of people who have signed up, the finding-a-donor process has become much more successful. Another advantage of stem-cell transplant today is that If a match can’t be found, they can use cord blood—from donated umbilical cords after birth—which have good outcomes even if the HLA match isn’t as good. If the donor for me follows through, she will donate the stem cel