I finally had the bone marrow transplant 3/23. I actually was much more a blood transfusion than a transplant. They essentially treated my bone marrow, as opposed to removing mine and replacing it with a donor's. No donor was involved.
After 5 days of injections of drugs to induce stem cell production, and 2 days of filtering my blood to harvest the newly produced stem cells, I was given 2 "lethal" doses of chemo, one each day. The following day, the harvested stem cells were introduced. The closest I can come to describing how I felt afterwards is a bad hangover. headaches, nausea, diarrhea, general listlessness. Frankly, I was led to believe it would be much worse than it actually was.
4/4 I was released from the hospital, and allowed to go home. I'm still not 100%, but I feel a little better each day. I have been walking about a mile and a half each time, 4-5 times a day. Keeping the dogs tired. I don't have a lot of energy, but as long as I take my time, I'm OK.
I am thankful to everyone who has wished me well, who has offered up prayers in my behalf, and who have been such good friends to me. Prayers have definitely been answered, I assure you. I am doing much better than I have any right to expect.
It is a bit uncertain at this point whether they killed all of the cancer. Enough stem cells were harvested that a second transplant can be done without a re-harvesting of stem cells. I will have to undergo some routine (more or less) blood testing, which will tell the tales.