High Dose Chemo and Stem Cell Transp

[Sally R]

My son will soon start High dose chemo with a Stem cell transp. Can anyone tell me how long the HDC will last?

[Lori]

Hi Sally, my husband has just completed his first round of high dose with stem cell transplant. Where is your son having the treatments? We are at Indiana University. If by chance you are coming here, please let me know and we can meet. Our process went as follows:

a day of prework - chest xray, ekg, pulmonary tests
Friday - started shots of neuprogen to increase the white blood cells. I gave my husband those shots for 4 days
Tuesday he went in for the stem cell extraction - very non-eventful and wasn't painful. They were able to collect enough from him in one day so we started the chemo on wed. that lasted for 3 days. He is doing as an outpatient but each day we spend about 4 hours in the hospital getting hydration and medicine. after the last day of chemo he has two rest days, then the next day they put the stem cells back in. This is considered day 0 and each day out is day +1, day +2, etc. They say his white blood counts should be back to normal ranges by day 14. Then we have a week off and start over again. Each monday they take the tumor markers. This has been the most stressful day of the whole process.

It seems pretty awful in the beginning, but so far my husband has handled the process very well. Please let me know where you son is going for the treatments.

Lori

[cellblock]

Hi Sally!
My husband just went through a tandem stem cell transplant. He had the high dose chemo for 3 days had 2 days off then got his stem cells back which they consider day 0 each day after that is +1, +2 he was inpatient 3 weeks for each one. The chemo didn't seem to be bad, it was about 3 days after he got the stem cells back that he didn't feel so hot. Hope that helps.
Jen in AZ