Premera commits!

Tyler got a call from Rose Crew, our case manager with Premera, yesterday. She says that Premera has approved Tyler's transplant! That means they have finally committed to the $250,000 from Tyler's policy towards the transplant. This is a huge relief to us because Tyler's transplant is a Phase I trial, which means the insurance company would be much less likely to pay for because it is much earlier in the research process.

Tyler will actually be only the 3rd person to ever get this particular combination of radiation and donor. That definitely has made me more nervous, but our meeting with Dr Pagel (the doctor heading up this particular trial) explained to us that the radiolabeled antibody had been used in lots of autologous transplants (where the patient gives their own marrow for the procedure) with success. They were just now testing how it could be used in allogeneic transplants (when the marrow comes from another person).

Perhaps 10 years down the road, another family in our situation with be thankful that Tyler was willing to get a transplant with a radiolabeled antibody and parent donor. We are certainly thankful to those who blazed a trail with the whole transplant process over the past 25-30 years.