November 14, 2013

Stevie is home for a few days and Casey gets admitted into the hospital tomorrow. They had all of their pre-testing and counseling done this week. They took several pints of blood from Stevie and Casey had dental, vision, heart and lung tests. He also got a shot of chemo in his spine. I will post Casey's mailing address tomorrow. Someone asked me why they are transplanting his bone marrow. The simple answer is Leukemia is cancer in your blood. Your blood is produced from your bone marrow. Casey's bone marrow is making bad blood. It does get a lot more complicated from there with B cells vs T cells, Philadelphia positive or negative, etc. Prior to the transplant they will kill all of Casey's cells to make room for Stevie's cells to take over. This will leave him with no immune system, so he will be locked in his hospital room for a while. The intense amount of chemo leave him with no desire to leave his bed. They did say he might not get as sick this time since he has no cancer in his system at this time. Since leukemia is in your blood, it travels throughout your whole body and can hide in places like your brain, gums, eyes, etc. We are not sure why none of the other transplants worked, but feel confident he is getting the best treatment available and they are being very thorough.
Casey and Stevie thought they were funny by sending me this photo. Well we will see who gets the last laugh. I am posting it here for everyone to see. What a couple of geeks.