Hope all goes well for William - it'd be most uplifting to hear of a positive outcome . . . . . . . how long will it be before you know if his new cells 'work' ?
I've heard that the conditioning (i.e. getting the body ready for the transplant and killing off his stem cells) is usually ok. It's the day after the cells go in that they usually go down hill. So Friday or Saturday this week is when he'll get bad.
It takes about 2 weeks of him being a real risk of infection before the cells engraft and start to produce new blood cells (red, white and platelets). Then we have to hope for the following months that he doesn't get any nasty virus's. Have heard that 4 children who died in Jan/ feb this year 3 months post transplant. So, it's going to be nervy for some time. I think usually the cells do engraft so that's not the worry. I think from what they told us there's a 15% chance that he'll die due to the BMT process or a virus, which is actually not too bad a statistic.
With regards to the cancer being killed off and gone, we won;t know for 5 years. Though if he hasn't relapsed within 2 years that's usually a good sign. He has a 30% chance that he will relapse again. I think the way to think of it, is if I took some of WIlliam's cancer cells and injected them into me, my immune system would see them as foreign and kill them. i.e. I can't catch cancer from him. The problem is William's current bone marrow doesn't see the cancer as a foreign body and hence his immune system has allowed the cells to co-exist. I think this is the current field of research, trying to turn the immune system back on so that it see's the cancer as foreign and kills it off. So the idea is to kill off as many cells as possible during the conditioning, then the new stem cells from a donor will engraft in William's body and then see any resident Cancer cells as foreign and kill them. So in affect the new immune system is the fighting force that will cure him. So, it's just wait and see if works. I think there's a very good chance it will (touch wood).
So it's just wait and hope.
I'm actually uploading photos on twitter if anyone fancies seeing the pictures of the chemo + hopefully the new stem cells on Thursday if I manage to get a photo. @jameslyne1
