Hello Catalinacat,
Wishing you and your sister the best of luck during the transplant process. Are you a full match or haplo (half) HLA match? Many centers are doing haplo sibling matches or half matches which are more common between siblings. This allows a transplant to take place even if there is not full match.
I assume you are donating through peripheral stem cell donation and not a bone marrow harvest. The decision to use bone marrow or peripheral stem cells is very transplant center dependent. At our hospital, we almost always use peripheral stem cell collection unless the recipient has a non cancerous diagnosis like aplastic anemia then bone marrow harvest is done. bethematch.com is a good website for information.
One of the challenges of doing a stem cell transplant is planning for the best time to do it. And then everything gets moved along fast and there is little time to plan. The recipient has to be in a good remission for the transplant to happen and also has to be infection free and healthy enough to undergo the high dose chemotherapy. Sometimes, a transplant date is given, the donor undergoes all the testing and is ready to donate, only to find out the procedure has to be postponed if the recipient's disease relapsed or if there is an infection present. So it is hard to plan. Some testing may need to be repeated if >30 days has gone by especially all the blood work. So hang in there. Stem cell transplant is a very tough journey for the recipient and the caregivers. There are a lot of ups and downs. You are giving your sister a chance to be cancer free but it is a hard journey.
Keep us posted. wishing you and your family good health.
Sherri
Topic: I'm donating bone marrow (Read 3333 times)