One Small Step

Firstly thanks Comkick I appreciate the support, to clear up the point you made - yes I am having a mini transplant or using the hospital terminology "reduced intensity peripheral blood stem cell transplant" now isn't that a tongue twister if ever there was one! Secondly, hooray one of the things that has been causing me stress is finally being sorted out. As previously stated my sister lives in Australia and will be coming to the UK to provide the stem cells for me. As we are having to pay for her travel and loss of earnings within the family (much as the donor web pages say we shouldn't) we wanted to be sure she was fully compatible. The hospital need to check her for CMV as I am negative, before they finally confirm her compatibility so we asked for the test to be done in Australia. Instead of asking an Australian hospital to do the test they have asked for the blood to be sent back to the UK so they can do the test; I can only assume they don't want to pay for Australia to do it. It has taken several weeks and lots of chasing but the necessary bottles were finally received by my sister, she has had the blood taken and arranged for it to be sent back to the UK. Hopefully we will get the results soon and we will get the confirmation we need. For those that want to know Cytomegalovirus [CMV] belongs to the herpes family of viruses, which includes the viruses that cause chicken-pox/shingles, cold sores and glandular fever. CMV stays hidden unless our immune system starts to fail which can happen following a stem cell or bone marrow transplant. If this happens, the virus can attack the lung, gut, liver or nerves and in some cases can prove fatal. Anti-viral drugs are used to stop the virus becoming active. Anyway that is all for now