Life and Lawn Care

How wonderful to sign on tonight and read all your messages! Thank you all so much.

So much has happened over the past few days. We moved into our apartment on Saturday. It is a short 5 minute walk from the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) Clinic which is where we have all our outpatient appointments. The apartment couldn't be handier, although we do have to climb a steep hill to get to the end of the street. In fact, it seems everywhere we go involves climbing hills. It's quite an adjustment for prairie dwellers like us. Remember the old joke....'When I was a child we walked miles to school and it was uphill both ways.' Well....the walk from our apartment to the clinic is truly uphill both ways. The apartment is furnished and has all the basics we need. I do wish I had remembered Brenda Skerett's advice to bring along my favorite knife and frying pan when I packed to come. We had a bit of confusion regarding our apartment phone. It is (206) 264-1943. Please remember there is a 2 hour time difference between Saskatchewan and Seattle.

The weather continues to be sunny and very mild here. We're quite comfortable wearing a light jacket and sweater. We've had very little rain since our arrival. Arnie is experiencing his first side-effect since moving here. The humidity from being near the ocean makes his hair very curly.

We had an appointment with our tranplant physician the other day. She spent 90 minutes with us, explaining the transplant process planned for Arnie and answering all our questions. We are definitely in caring, capable hands.

Arnie is scheduled for a 'mixed chimeric' or 'mini' tranplant. In this type of transplant, the stem cells will be donated by an unrelated person. Arnie will receive a moderate dose of chemotherapy and radiation to eliminate his cancer and damage his own immune system. He will then receive donated stem cells which will settle into his bone marrow and form a new immune system. The goal of the new immune system is to have the donor cells attack the cancer and keep it in check. The 'mixed chimeric' transplant is a type of allogeneic transplant because it involves transplanting stem cells donated by an unrelated individual but the conditioning chemotherapy and radiation is less intensive than the typical allogeneic transplant. The chief benefit of the mini transplant is the milder pre-transplant chemo and radiation which should make the complications and side effects milder as well. In fact, the plan is to do all of Arnie's care as an outpatient.

Arnie likens the process to redoing the lawn. A full allogeneic transplant would bring in a bobcat to remove all the sod, leave the barren soil and then seed the new lawn. A mixed chimeric transplant or mini transplant is more like spraying weed-killer over the old lawn, allowing the weeds and quack grass to die off and then reseeding. With proper care and attention, the new grass will grow in and sqeeze out the weeds.

Our transplant physician described the full allogeneic transplant as 'the full meal deal' and the mini transplant as the 'happy meal'. Both types of transplants cause the patient to develop 'graft-versus-host disease', but more about that another time.

When was the last time anyone thought of Arnie and mini together? The times they are a-changin'.
Enough technical talk for one night.
Thanks so much for your caring thoughts and prayers. We love you all.
Arnie & Brenda