Tom’s Leukemia Journey
Story Written By: Tom Hayes
Two and a half years after diagnosis I relapsed. After relapsing, I was told I would repeatedly relapse the rest of my life each time I achieved remission. But a stem-cell transplant reduces the chance of relapse to less than 10%. (It is also essentially known as a bone-marrow transplant). I decided to start the search for a donor.
Before receiving a transplant, I had to be given more chemotherapy to return to a state of remission (less than 5% cancer cells in the blood). You typically won’t be a candidate for transplant, otherwise. Within a few months of relapsing, I was told that the international registry for stem-cell/bone-marrow donors had determined that there were 40 people in the world who were a ‘strong match’ for my blood profile and a successful transplant requires this. One donor had an additional two markers that made his ‘stem cells’ the best match. [read more]