son due stem transplant been very angry towards me at present on intense treatment b4 stem trasplant

Hi ,

and welcome to the group though so sad you needed to find your way here.

pre-SCT treatment is tough, and I guess you are hurting lots as well as your son, his hurt and anguish is coming out in anger towards you. It’s really hard to bear, and I’m glad you’ve found a way to express this. 

I hope his hospital has a method of quickly accessing psychological help for you both, as that really does need to be in place, for him especially.

Please do use the forum to ‘vent’, as fellow patients AND carers (yes I’m the Mum of a two-time SCT patient, auto and allo) read, post, and are happy to support you. With our lass we were afraid to hug while she was going through it all, firstly she felt too ‘enclosed’ and then also we were aware of possibly passing on non-airborne bugs

Sending a big hug xxx

As a ps, please do pop a bit of into on your profile; it doesn’t have to be much but does help folk when replying as they don’t then need to search through the thread.

to do it, click on your user name (it’s the way to read all our experiences!) go to ‘edit my profile’ type away and then when done, click on ‘save’ 

Hugs xxx

Hi again and welcome across to this corner of the Community.

I am sorry to hear that your son is being very volatile....... but safe to say he is working through his mortality, he is dealing with the fear of death and that he is not immortal.

Blood cancer treatment is hard but Stem Cell Transplant may well be harder as this is often a tough treatment and if he has done any research he may well have picked up that the treatment can be life changing for both good and unfortunately bad.

I am rather sure that he does not realise what he is saying and of course does not mean what comes out. I reflect back and must admit I said a few things to my family that were not in my character and have no knowledge every saying them and I only found out years after once we were out the other side of treatment.

Some of the treatment used do challenge our ability to think straight and can indeed make us say things that we eventually regret saying..... when he is going off on one you need to just give him space, but at the same time be there when he needs you.

Has he found out what type of Stem Cell Transplant is going to get? Using his own Stem Cells or Stem Cells from a matched donor?

I will post these information books for you again so you can find them.

• Understanding donor stem cell transplant (allogeneic) - you can see the PDF here.
• Understanding stem cell transplants using your own cells (autologous) - PDF here.

Do try and put some info in your profile as it does help others reply with some background details without having to search through you old posts.

We are around to help out as best as we can and to give ((hugs))

Just picking up on something that moomy said.

We were assigned a Psychologist from day one going into my SCT, she meet with us both during the time is hospital and for a good year after treatment was complete. Having had two SCTs we got to know her very well as we were meeting for over 3 years.

This preparation is important as once he is in the SCT unit he can be in there for a good 3-4 weeks and not allowed out. So do bring this up at any opportunity with his team.

Hi Choo,

I just wanted to add on top of Moomy’s and Mike’s great replies that the moods may be accentuated by the drugs he is taking - is he on steroids by any chance? And if it is prednisolone, that drug can significantly alter moods, especially at high doses. One of my doctors once warned me that a nice, old lady who was put onto prednisolone once through a clock at her and as soon as I went on the drug, I understood why. So it is definitely worthwhile checking with your son’s medical teams whether his drug profile might be contributing to his moods. One thing I know for certain though is that this is not your real son. He is likely to be in a very bad place at the moment so please try not to take his current actions to heart - I am sure that he continues to love you very very much.

All the very best

Greg