Two Transplants
Hi Everyone!
I hope all is well. Grace is having a great day. She vomited this morning at 6am but has been very well and up and out of bed playing ever since. We had a bit of an issue last week with Grace's transplant. As most of you know we were using Grace's umbilical cord that we froze when she was born for the stem cells for her transplant. All initial testing of her cord went really well with it having 3.7million stem cells per kg (2 to 4 million is good) as well as good volume and what seemed to be good "integrity". As a result her BMT team did not put Grace through a stem cell harvest. They "pulled" a back up sample from her hip bones in the OR a few months back but felt that because her umbilical cord counts were so good they would not put her through an invasive harvest. When her umbilical cord cells were defrosted the machine that the lab uses to count the stem cells was unable to confirm the count taken back when she was born of 3.7 million per kg. As a result the lab tried to do a manual count and found that many of the stem cells had clumped together. Her BMT doc was very concerned and ordered that the back up sample be defrosted and infused. They hoped to split the back up sample in two so that they would still have a back up to the back up but this was impossible since the counts on the back up were only around 1.6 million per kg. I was very upset and nervous about this because I'm now in fear that if Grace does not engraft (the transplant "takes") then we will have nothing to then turn to. Grace's BMT doc felt that it was much riskier not to use the back up right away. As a result.... Grace had a transplant on Wed. and again on Thurs. so if your counting today would be considered day +4 not +5. Please pray for Grace to engraft. I was told that only 2 other children since '88 have not engrafted using their own stem cells but both had viruses on board which Grace does not have (knock on wood). But considering the odds that we were given about Grace's tumour being benign (99%) which was obviously wrong... you can understand why I'll be a mess until Grace engrafts. Of course there are lots of complications around transplant but we just need to pray for the best. We've heard that day +6 to +9 are the hardest but as you all know Grace doesn't follow the same path as others so well keep you posted.
Keep praying for our babies return to good health.
Les
I hope all is well. Grace is having a great day. She vomited this morning at 6am but has been very well and up and out of bed playing ever since. We had a bit of an issue last week with Grace's transplant. As most of you know we were using Grace's umbilical cord that we froze when she was born for the stem cells for her transplant. All initial testing of her cord went really well with it having 3.7million stem cells per kg (2 to 4 million is good) as well as good volume and what seemed to be good "integrity". As a result her BMT team did not put Grace through a stem cell harvest. They "pulled" a back up sample from her hip bones in the OR a few months back but felt that because her umbilical cord counts were so good they would not put her through an invasive harvest. When her umbilical cord cells were defrosted the machine that the lab uses to count the stem cells was unable to confirm the count taken back when she was born of 3.7 million per kg. As a result the lab tried to do a manual count and found that many of the stem cells had clumped together. Her BMT doc was very concerned and ordered that the back up sample be defrosted and infused. They hoped to split the back up sample in two so that they would still have a back up to the back up but this was impossible since the counts on the back up were only around 1.6 million per kg. I was very upset and nervous about this because I'm now in fear that if Grace does not engraft (the transplant "takes") then we will have nothing to then turn to. Grace's BMT doc felt that it was much riskier not to use the back up right away. As a result.... Grace had a transplant on Wed. and again on Thurs. so if your counting today would be considered day +4 not +5. Please pray for Grace to engraft. I was told that only 2 other children since '88 have not engrafted using their own stem cells but both had viruses on board which Grace does not have (knock on wood). But considering the odds that we were given about Grace's tumour being benign (99%) which was obviously wrong... you can understand why I'll be a mess until Grace engrafts. Of course there are lots of complications around transplant but we just need to pray for the best. We've heard that day +6 to +9 are the hardest but as you all know Grace doesn't follow the same path as others so well keep you posted.
Keep praying for our babies return to good health.
Les
posted by Lesley at 4:03 p.m.
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