Last week we had a conference call with Nadia’s Hemo team. The initial look at the blood work of the cousin’s does not look like they will be a better match than the cord blood we have on hold for Nadia. We knew that this was a long shot, but I would be lying if I said that I was not devastated.
They are looking at us to be in Vancouver for Feb 3 to start the baseline testing then Feb 11 for the start of the 10 day chemo regime. Then on Feb 21 they will transfuse her with the cord blood. They call this day 0. That makes today day -28.
The cord blood is from 2011. The hemo team are happy with as it is fairly recent and retrieval techniques have changed a lot in the last few years. We will NOT know who this wonderful momma and baby is that was so generous and forward thinking to donate to a public cord registry, but we are so VERY thankful that they did.
The cord blood match was 5/6 match, when you are looking at a stem cell cord blood match, they look at 6 indicators. So the mismatch for Nadia is on the A, which is apparently if you have a partial match cord blood match this is the one you want it to mismatch on. What we were told is with cord blood it is a longer engraftment period. With bone marrow stem cells we should start seeing her blood levels going up by day +10 to day +15. With cord blood they start to see them go up around day +20.
We will definitely be in the hospital for the full 30 days after the transplant probably more if she gets an infection etc. We will remain in Vancouver until probably 100 days post transplant if all goes according to plan.
There was talk about Graft Versus Host Disease and their concerns about it. You can look it up and read all about it, but be warned it can be a bit of a scary read. And concerns about engraftment as cord blood takes longer.
They are also happy with the time of year this is taking place, air quality counts, construction at the hospital etc.
So there you have it, we will have another meeting with them during the week preceding her chemo regime to go over more stuff in detail. This meeting was to lay out the game plan for Nadia.
On a brighter note we as a family had a great weekend snowshoeing and hanging out in Big White. I think it took every ounce of strength for Thor not to put Nadia on some skis and take her on the runs.
Thanks again for all of your support, emails, private messages etc. We feel very lucky and blessed to have you in our live and cheering for Nadia as she continues on her quest. xoxo
(don’t let the picture above scare you. We did not let Nadia slide down those awesome looking sledding hills 🙂 )
(This yellow snow is not so bad)
(Tara does tricks)
(Thor doing all the work)
(Nadia sledging!)
