Bone marrow transplant…tell me if i have it right:?
the donor-(me) is drugged to sleep while the surgeon stabbs a needle into my hip bone and takes out some red liquid. i dont feel anything but as soon as i get up i feel sore and i might have difficulty walking for the next few days. a tylenol would help me and it wont hurt anymore. is that all the side effects?? is that how they do it?? and how old does the donor need to be?
Thats one way of doing it. They use large needles in the hip bone to pull the marrow out. You will be under general anesthesia. And yes, sore afterwards, but tylonal will help that.
An unrelated donor must be 18 or older. A related donor can donate with parental permission.
The other way to do it is peripheral blood stem cell instead of marrow. In this proceedure, the donor is hooked up to a aphersis machine (the same thing used at the plasma center and certain red cross donations). The machine pulls the blood out, runs through a centrifuse, seperates out the stem cells (they are a type of white blood cell) warms the rest of the blood and gives it back to you. In this process you will be awake, have 2 needles inserted.
With either process, you will have to take neupogin shots (growth hormone) for a few days before hand to stimulate the bone marrow into producing more stem cells. This will give you minor bone or joint pain that can also be treated with tylonal.
As a stem cell transplant patient, I have been through the process to donate actual marrow. Its the same process as a bone marrow biopsy. The difference is biopsy patients arent put to sleep because they only take a tiny bit. With donation, they take all they can get, and its very painful.
I was orginally going to do an autologous transplant, which means I was going to use my own stem cells. So I have also been through the aphersis stem cell harvesting process.
Since I am a patient, I cannot donate. However, having been there, its really not that bad. It is a small gift that you can give that will help save someone's life.