Shannon was admitted to Houston Methodist Hospital in the Texas Medical Center on Dec. 6th. Her room is twice the size of any of her previous rooms, very modern, clean, and comfortable. She’s on the BMT (Bone Marrow Transplant)floor in the Walter Tower. It’s a locked down unit. The doors remain closed and locked to outside guests. The staff has to buzz you in, only after you’ve washed your hands and you’re wearing a mask. Each nurse only has 3 patients, so Shannon gets lots of attention and there’s nurse aides too.

On Friday the 6th she went down to IR and got a triple lumen tunnled cathether placed in her chest. This is used for all of her IV meds and blood draws. They started her main chemo drug on Friday and then ran it again on Saturday. Sunday the 8th was a free day. Then on Monday the 9th, she started TBI (Total Body Irradiation). She goes down to the Radiology Oncology department around 8am, and they give her entire body radiation to kill off all of her bone marrow and any remaining leukemia cells. The Radiology Oncologist said this would be a lethal dose of radiation, IF she wasn’t immediately getting a bone marrow transplant right after. This is because it’s killing everything in her marrow. She has to get the transplant to replace what was killed off. He also mentioned that she will probably develop cataracts in a few years from the radiation. She’ll need to have lens replacement surgery if/when her vision starts to get blurry. She had TBI every morning Monday the 9th thru Thursday the 12th.

She was possibly going to get her transplant on the night of the 12th, but it was pushed to 1pm on Friday the 13th.(Insert theme music here…lol). On Friday the 13th, they told us that it was being pushed back to around 4pm. The donor cells missed their flight for some reason. There’s a custodian/lab person that travels with them. Once they arrive in Houston, they’re taken to Texas Children’s Hospital lab. They process the donor cells. I’m not actually sure what that entails. Once ready, they come down the street a couple of blocks to Methodist. They premediated Shannon with several drugs to counteract any possible reactions. The trasplant is basically just like a blood transfusion, except in only takes about 20 minutes and there’s multiple people staring at you: The RN, the nurse practitioner and the transplant doctor. Shannon was very nervous but they eased her mind and said that it’s very rare to see any type of immediate reaction and they’d know within minutes if anything was going to occur.

The nurse started the infusion after the doctor checked the cells with the lab tech. It was a fairly large bag, I would estimate about 750cc. It looked reddish-milky in color. They remove most of the red cells to help prevent reactions, because the donor was blood type B+ and Shannon is O. Shannon and the donor are a 10 out of 10 HLA match though, which is the important part. The whole infusion/transplant only took 18 minutes. There were no complications. Shannon felt totally normal and they continued to monitor her vital signs for about an hour post transplant.

Now we wait. Currently her blood cells have been dropping daily, from the chemo and radiation. Her white blood cells will probably hit zero in the next day or so. She will sit at zero for 1-2 weeks while the new donor marrow takes root in her bones and starts producing new white cells. Her counts have to come back up before she can be discharged home. That’s why she will be her another 3 weeks or so. The whole admission is approximately 1 month. In addition to her white count dropping, her red blood cells and platelets are dropping too. She will be getting blood and platelet transfusions daily or every other day they estimated, until the new marrow starts producing cells on it’s own.

They said “Happy Birthday” to Shannon right after the transplant. It’s the start of a new life without cancer. It’s now the day after, “Allo Day +1.” Leading up to the transplant the board in her room said “Allo Day -6”, then -5 and so on until transplant day it said “Allo Day 0.” Allo – is in reference to Allogeneic, which means her donor cells are from someone else. There’s patients with other diagnosis that actually use their own stem cells, but with Shannon’s diagnosis, she has to use stem cells from another person.

Random side notes:

Also, now she has to wear a special 3M Mask with 2 big filters on it when she leaves the room to walk the halls on the unit. This is to protect her from any airborne bacteria, mold, fungi, viruses, etc. Once her new marrow starts producing cells, her blood type will switch from O to B….kinda crazy how that works. They have her on an anti-rejection drug right now thru the IV, but they’ll change it to an oral form before she goes home. She’s writing a letter to the donor, however, we can’t know anything about each other until 1 year has passed. The transplant coordinator has to pass the letters back and forth, but we can’t include contact info until 1 year has passed. Hopefully she’ll want to meet with Shannon after 1 year and we can find out who this angel is.