Day -16. It’s a little bittersweet jumping back my day count to a negative number. On one hand, we have a confirmed donor, a set day for transplant, and a plan to mobilize my continued journey to being healthy again. On the other hand, it’s a reminder that I have to go through this whole process all over again; that all of the physical progress I’ve made thus far gets reset with no guarantee that I’ll be “back to normal” when all is said and done. I’m hopeful that the graft will keep this time, but the Skeptical Biostatistician voice in the back of mind, the same one that helped rationalize scientifically why I’m even going through this in the first place, keeps reminding me of how slim the chances are of this working, based on published data regarding success rates for second allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) transplants in patients with severe aplastic anemia. Either way, I’m clutching, desperately holding onto the belief that positive thinking, happy thoughts, and lots of emotional processing via crying will help keep me alive. Oh, and science.

Everything is set for the second transplant. I’ve done all of the necessary pre-requisite tests to prove to my insurance company that I’m fit for transplant (pulmonary function test, chest x-ray, a ton of blood work, an echo, another bone marrow biopsy), as well as other things to prep for radiation (CT scan, getting tattoos on my chest and back to mark a homing center for radiation — my first tattoo!). Now we wait.

Here’s the game plan:

I get admitted on October 16th and we’ll do four days of chemo. On Day -1, we’ll do a total body irradiation (TBI) of 2 Grays. This amount is very, very little and runs little to no risk of affecting my body negatively.

To provide a comparison for how little the dose is: when they irradiate someone with breast cancer, they use 80 Grays targeting the tumor(s) in the mammary glands. For someone with prostate cancer, they use 60 Grays targeting the tumor(s) in the prostate. For someone with a blood cancer like leukemia or multiple myeloma, they use 11-13.5 Grays targeting the whole body. My dosage, 2 Grays, is used merely as an immunosuppressant, and with a dose that low there are little to no complications/side effects.

Then, we transplant the stem cells on Day 0, October 21st, (my second re-birthday so I guess my third birthday?) and then we wait and see.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of emotions and logistical things over the past few weeks. Lots of hard feelings like anger, frustration, anxiety, restlessness, sadness, and irritation. And some easy feelings like relief, happiness, ambivalence, and contentment. I suppose there’s nothing special about the insane emotional roller coaster I’ve been on, except everything feels super amplified since I’m low on blood. I can’t wait for my second transplant.