Still catching up

So cut to July 2007. They are preparing Tim for an auto transplant.
It takes forever. There are literally hundreds of patients waiting for
transplants in this hospital. We have a lymphoma doctor who is
world-renowned who works with our doc. and they've got people
flying in from all over the world. Tim has his pre-transplant work-up,
gets a catheter implanted on 7/30 and starts CDEP as an out-patient
for 4 days in our home. The home care nurse who handles this is the tops.
Then it's neupogen shots and aphoresis which began on 8/13. He takes
5 full days to collect just shy of their goal but it's good enough. They get
extra to freeze for possible later use. We had originally thought that Tim's transplant would take place in summer. Instead he goes in on our daughter's second day of school(9/6). We stay in an apartment just 2 blocks from the hosp. The back and forth is rough when you are "sea-sick" and anemic and there's a time or two he has to wheelchair it. He
gets to the cancer clinic everyday about 8 or 9 am and stays till 4 or 5
pm. Things go OK. Of course it's no picnic but we feel grateful that it's
not as bad as some people have had it and the 6 months of anticipation
can really build this process up in your mind. It was hard being away from our daughter but I am able to get home a few times when he gets
over the worst of it and we get through the 2 weeks. We get home on 9/20. He is still weak and nauseous but it's good to be home at last.
Last week, we got the results of his first round of blood tests. We are just
devastated. It looks like it did not work. We will know more with the next round of tests but either way, our doc. warns us that it did not work as
it should have and we are not going to be in the group of patients who
get a remission from auto transplants. They planned to do another in
3 to 4 months or a "mini-allo" with his sister's cells if Tim decided to do that. They were strongly urging him to do the mini-allo. Now Tim may not
be a candidate for that process either. The doc. tells us that we may be looking at a full ablative allo transplant as our best option and only option for a possible cure.So, this is where we are now. We have an appt.
in NYC with a top myeloma center in Nov. after we get his 2nd round of
blood tests back. Our doc. did say that sometimes numbers don't fall right away but I get the feeling he is not holding his breath. I made that
appt. in NYC as a second opinion. I feel we just can't make a decision like this without it. I think our doc. is aggressive. Aside from MM, my husband is in great physical shape and I think they want to throw the big guns at him thinking he can take it. This may be a good idea, then again
maybe not. It's hard to do something that can very likely cause your death for a long shot of a cure and meanwhile there may be drugs that
may control myeloma or cure it in the near future. I would welcome any
comments from folks. I learn so much from other patients. We are trying
to make an educated decision and the MM scenerio is changing so fast,
it's hard to keep up.