Things are Getting Real
On Sept. 27th I had an appointment with my BMT specialist under the premise that he was going to go through some charts with me showing the long term survival rates of patients like myself in this situation, and it was supposed to make me feel relieved. I instead received an update that did not make me feel relieved in any sort of sense of the word. He told me they had not found any 10/10 matches for me on the worldwide donor registry, though they had found four 9/10 matches. He said that because he wanted to do the procedure with actual bone marrow and not stem cells, the donor would have to undergo an operation where they are under anaesthesia and having their bone marrow extracted from their bone, not the peripheral stem cells collected from the blood. One of the four donors who had matched me at 9/10 refused to do the bone marrow extraction and so now my options are down to three, and two of which they have not done any further testing on. He also said that even if I wait for a 10/10 match it is unlikely that they will find one in time for me since my chances of finding a suitable match are 1 in a million. Even if a million more people were to join the bone marrow registry in the next month, the chances that one of those people would match me perfectly is 0.000001%. This information means that he wants to push ahead with the transplant using a 9/10 match. According to him and the infinite wisdom of the internet, 9/10 matches are more susceptible to graft versus host disease and my chance of survival dropped down to around 60%. All of this of course does worry me quite a bit since what if the other three decide they don't want to donate marrow either? What if the 9/10 match doesn't graft because of the less compatible genetics and my body rejects the transplant? They did give me a tentative hospitalization date and so I am to start chemotherapy in early November if everything else goes to plan.
I did have some good news that came out of the appointment! I was told that it would be possible to set up platelet transfusions before and after the operation to harvest my eggs. This means that I will have the option to have children later on in life and that is something to smile about! I called the gynaecologist's office they next day while I was getting blood and we set up an appointment for the following day to take a look at making a care plan for me. Finally some good news came my way!
The appointment with the gynaecologist went well and she told me that the pharmaceutical company that provides the medications for the daily hormone injections before the harvesting are going to cover the cost of medication because the reason for the operation is medical and not personal. This will cover around $3000 of the cost. She also directed me towards a financial aid for young women like myself who could possibly cover up to $2500 of the $4000 cost of the procedure! I feel incredibly thankful that there is help for women out there who could not do this on their own! I ended the appointment with an internal ultrasound to check on the status of my ovaries. She said everything looked good and I will start my egg stimulant injections on Oct. 11th and continue them daily for two weeks. Then, I will have the egg collection operation around Oct. 25th and they hope to collect 10-20 eggs. They will put them through cryopreservation that same day and voila! my chance of having a baby just got real. Now I just have to find myself a man who is into bald girls! haha.