On the Road Again Soon

We just received word  that Kevin is scheduled to be back at UCSF on February 26th for pre-screening and then to be admitted to the hospital on the 27th to begin the first transplant process.  We've been told to expect to stay for a month.  Once we get there we will have a better understanding of exactly what's going to happen.  It's our understanding that he will receive four days of 'super chemo' that really kills everything.  Their original plan was to include two of these rounds just to get him into remission, but we were blessed to skip those as the 'regular chemo' did the job.  But it must be done before the stem cell transplant.  He will have two tandem transplants with a period of rest in between.

After the four days of chemo, I'm guessing he will be very sick.  It takes about a week for everything to die off.  That will make him neutropenic, which means he will have NO immunity.  They will leave him there where they can monitor him and jump on top of any infections or complications.  After a period of recovery they will put a batch of his stem cells back into him and see how that goes.  We just don't know the schedule yet.

He had a chest X-ray today.  We need that to be clear & healthy for all this to proceed.  He has no indications of any infection now, but aside from a fever he wouldn't have known he had pneumonia in the first place!  I'm sure it will all happen.  We are packing and getting ready to leave as scheduled.

We can't thank you enough for your prayers.  We keep running into people who didn't know Kevin had cancer who are now praying or people who tell us about someone they ran into who are now praying.  We have much faith in prayer.  It has already brought us many miracles and countless tender mercies. We know this is going to work!  But I think this is definitely going to be the hardest part of Kevin's treatment so far.  I don't really know what he's in for.  Maybe ignorance is bliss! Dale