Thursday, June 21, 2007

Day +351 : A veteran (1)

I am fine today. My mother-in-law came back from Sarawak this morning and the two nieces went back to Sarawak this evening. They will be coming here again next Thursday before proceeding to their respective university.

Now the story...

I met a man who did his allogeneic bone marrow transplant in 1999 in UH. Like me, he was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). After 4 cycles of chemotherapy, he did the bone marrow transplant with stem cells donated by his sister.

He told me he stayed in the VIP (isolated) room for 18 days only for the transplant. This is a record to me! Poor me had to stay in the room for almost 40 days :-( He said the secret to come up from room so fast was to drink lot of barley water and sweet potato soup. The barley would wash away the “toxic” from the medication while the sweet potato will boost the platelet count. May be I didn’t drink sweet potato soup, that was why I had to stay in the room for 40 days. However, one thing cannot be overlooked is that he was only 28 years old at that time while I was almost 40 years old when doing the transplant.

He got married after the bone marrow transplant :-) He and his wife had been dating for many years before he was diagnosed with AML. But due to the aggressive treatment, he is unable to bear children.

To be continued and see you next post :-)

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