There are several ways to imagine the bone marrow transplant engraftment process happening in my body right now. Besides being still tired from the drugs I received yesterday, I have no symptoms of a transplant, yet.  They said it may take a week or more for the side effects to begin.

But, I visualize one scenario and Kerstin has another take on the process.   First mine. The drugs I have been given this past week have been to suppress my autoimmune response to the transplant.  So, I picture my own cells floating casually through my veins, happy go lucky, with no idea what hit them.  Then come the new stem cells.  They are ready to party and raise a ruckus. They start to fight and knock my cells out and my cells disappear. Then the stem cells grow and grow and take over where my cells used to be produced in the bone marrow.  Voila, a stem cell transplant.

Last night we watched the wonderful movie ‘The Blind Side.’  In one scene when Michael was being harassed by a mouthy, obnoxious redneck, Michael called for a play where he pushed this opponent player all the way down the field to the fence and up and over it.  When the coach asked why he did it, Michael calmly replied that ‘It was time for him to go home.’

Well, that’s Kerstin’s vision of the process.  When my original bad bone marrow cells meet the new healthy stem cells, she thinks the new cells will visit and then tell the old ones to go away and this is the stem cells new home.  Sure sounds like a calmer process than mine.  Probably no side effects since it would be an amicable process.

Time will tell.  It’ll be a week or so till graft versus host disease effects take hold, but I’m in no hurry.  All I want is the stem cells to engraft in my bone marrow and my old cells never to return.