I am my own father

So, as Mandy has already informed you my father will be my donor if everything goes well over the next month. I guess that means I can put myself on restriction after all this, and as my brother has told me......my putts will start going off the green now (inside joke). Both my mother and father were HAPLO identical matches, but there were indicators from the testing that showed a better potential of successful transplant from my fathers HLA test. It is very complicated, and I wont even pretend to describe the reasons until we find out much much more next week.

My tentative shedule over the next month and a half goes as such:

August 20th: meet with transplant team, and start testing, registration, etc....
August 21st: meet with physician to discuss transplant procedure, etc...more testing
August 22nd: bone marrow aspiration, and other testing

My father will also undergo testing, physical, historical stuff those 3 days

I will continue to do testing, and have many appointments for about 14 days straight until approximately Sept. 4/5 I guess.

They will re-evaluate all the results at that point, and decide if it is still best to proceed with the transplant.

If its still a go: Sept 15th would be the day the would administor a "test" dose of the special antibody regimen for my situation with this specific transplant. If all goes well with that, they will begin giving me this antibody on Sept. 25th, and have me in "isolation" at UW for about 7-10 days. I apparently will be doing my own blood draws, blood pressure checks, vital sign checks, etc... during that time, as nurses arent even allowed to come into the room Im in.

After Im out of isolation, I will have about 5 to 6 days as an outpatient before the transplant date which is tentatively set for October 7th. From there it usually takes about 3 weeks to recover, before they turn me over to my caregiver(s), which will probably end up being a team of several people including Mandy, my mom, Gump, another mom (Kate Bledsoe), another mom (Tud....grandma), and maybe more. They will need to take care of me, making sure to check all of my vital signs and other to be learned criteria to keep me healthy. For about 100 days after my release from the hospital, I will be under 24 hour a day monitoring......and then it will slowly get less and less intensive as I get better.

Weve been told to expect that I may not be able to be out in public for about a year. For sure no restaurants or crowded places. It may be difficult to have company, especially if company is sick at all. In other words we will have to be very careful for awhile.

I am looking forward to this challenge! Im happy that we have a clear cut donor, so that we didnt have to sit down as a family and try to figure out who it would be on our own. Im especially looking forward to getting rid of this Leukemia once and for all. There are so many things Im looking forward to after all this, but I will take it one step at a time. Right now my only goal is to fight this every minute of every day.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for such an incredible response to helping Mandy and I with so many things! I could start naming names, but you all know who you are and I would feel bad leaving anyone out. I just want everyone to know that I am the most blessed person in the world..........my family and friends are incredible, I have so much to be thankful for! I could not be more amazed at how special all of you are! Everyone is giving me boundless strength, and I know I will get through this.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Tyler