Tami's Potential Donor: Still Some Big Hurdles to Clear

There are two posts today. Please be sure to read the one below this one. Tami was readmitted back to the hospital this afternoon.

So here's what I was able to learn today about Tami's potential donor's status and the transplant process. I was able to contact the cancer hospital's donor search department to learn what will happen next. As it stands a 10 of 10 match has been located. Still needed before Tami can receive her transplant are the following items:

1. Tami will receive a pre-transplant physical evaluation to make sure her body is strong enough to undergo the transplant procedure.

2. The Transplant will be scheduled. This means clearing availability of Tami's transplant hospital and team, the availability of the donor to go through their screening and pre-donation treatment process and the donor's hospital having the time in their schedule to harvest the stem cells to send to Seattle by plane.

3. The potential donor begins their physical eligibility screening process.

This is a biggie. Lots of prayers needed here that her potential donor will pass and be deemed both eligible and will be willing to donate to her.

A donor can change their mind at any time during the entire process so prayers are needed that Tami's donor will not waver in their desire to help a stranger in need.

Statistically 50% of matches do not proceed to donation due to a potential donor declining by choice to not go through with the donation or a donor who is willing t0 donate is told they are not physically eligible to do so.

4. A second blood draw will be done to confirm that the donor is indeed compatible. This will be a repeat process of the confirmatory testing that has already been done once to ensure their tissue type compatibility.

5. If all of these actions are cleared then the patient will begin their pre-donation treatment to receive the medicine to help his marrow over produce stem cells, which takes 5 days, and then a multi-day harvesting process where blood is taken each day, the stem cells are harvested and the donor receives the rest of their own blood back.

6. Tami will need to undergo a preparative process that includes rounds of chemotherapy (and possibly radiation) to kill her own bone marrow so that it will not try to reject her donor's marrow once the new stem cells have been administered into her blood stream and begin to engraft and take over for her old marrow in producing new red and white blood cells and platelets.

The preparative process of chemo and radiation may take from 4 to 10 days depending on many factors like the patient's age, the progression of their disease and any other treatments they may have received previously.

You can learn more about this process on the Be The Match website.

In total this process can take approximately 5 weeks to complete.

Thanks for checking in here. Tami really appreciates it. To be honest she's been kind of surprised and overwhelmed that so many people are out there rooting for her. But she really appreciates all of your support, prayers, good wishes and positive vibes, as does our entire family.

Posted by Stacie (Tami's cousin)