Today has gone pretty well so far! Tyler wasn’t able to sleep well the rest of the night due to continued bouts of nausea and vomiting. By late morning, he was up and was finally disconnected from his leads and tubing so he could take a VERY welcomed shower. This made him feel like a new man, and after the shower he was able to eat some soup and crackers, all of which have stayed down so far!
It’s so amazing to think of all that’s going on right now inside his body as the donor cells make their way through the bloodstream and try to find their way into Tyler’s bone marrow. Hopefully there will be a minimal amount of warring between Tyler’s cells and the donor’s cells! I asked the doctor this morning how his body undergoes the transition from A+ to B- blood. If I understood his explanation correctly, as the donor’s white cells start to engraft, they produce brand new red cells. Engraftment doesn’t happen until his counts zero out and then begin to recover: likely a couple of weeks from now. As the new white cells engraft, they make B- red cells, while Tyler’s existing white cells continue to produce A+ red cells. Over about six months, the donor’s immune system continues to engraft until ultimately the only red cells produced will be B-.
So far there are no signs of mucositis yet as Tyler’s counts have not yet dropped to zero from his 8 days of chemo. As that happens, the mucositis should appear. We’re praying for a mild case this time around! Tyler has also had no fevers so far, which is excellent. In the meantime, the main offenders are nausea and just feeling very poorly.
As I said in the last post, it feels great to be in the post-transplant category now! So much still has to go right inside Tyler’s body to make sure his leukemia doesn’t return, so we still need those prayers!