Bone Marrow Transplant Review

Well things are not as rosy as I was hoping! Harrison will need his second bone marrow transplant after all, but he does not have to have the conditioning before it - instead they will give him the cells we still have frozen as a kind of top up. This is great news as we are only adding to his progress this far, not restarting - good for him, good for us and good that he has no chemotherapy to add to his woes! :)

This can of course still have its own little complications but we'll get to that if anything bad happens. Harrison has stopped having IVIG for now so that his next lot of bone marrow cells (hopefully) start making B cells straight away. Harrison's B cells have not grown very well and by stopping the immunoglobulins being given monthly we will hopefully make the new bone marrow cells think these are lacking and therefore make new ones. We all know he is lacking in these cells and that he does not make his own immunity but his body seems to be thinking otherwise at this point. ( Harrison's T cell count is about 83% Ella's cells now - so we are making slow progress )

There are a few issues we therefore have to watch out for - making sure that we go back to Westmead Children's hospital weekly after the second lot of marrow, making sure that any signs of problems are seen to immediately - as there is a slight chance that these cells may react and cause Graft versus Host disease, a potentially lethal side affect of this bone marrow transplant process where the new marrow cells attack the body they are put into. Hopefully this won't happen. And Harrison and Ella are such a good match that he should be ok.

Then we have the worry about the cells themselves, given they have been frozen for longer than 12 months. They may not work as well, there could be other issues that come from this but again until they are delivered into his body we have no way of knowing what is to come.

Until the new marrow has had time to take effect Harrison will not have any IVIG temporarily, which puts him at risk a little of infection, but then he will restart a short course to give him the top up he needs monthly of immunity cells, and by the end of October we should have an idea of how things are progressing. If things are well then we may even be able to get Harrison about more, but I will hold by breath til January for this to truly happen, so if he goes well and he can start to go out and about more, earlier, then this will just be a bonus.

Otherwise he is doing well - bar a chest infection this week, and yet another course of antibiotics.. Oh well at least he doesn't get pneumonia!
I will update from kids hospital after the transplant with photo's for you all to see.