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Spring Survey 2012 Results

Introduction

Program: Advances in Stem Cell Transplants

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction LISTEN
  2. Leukemia Diagnosis LISTEN
  3. Treatment with Transplant LISTEN
  4. What is Bone Marrow Transplant? What is Stem Cell Transplant? LISTEN
  5. Types of Transplant LISTEN
  6. Preparing for Stem Cell Transplant LISTEN
  7. Mini Transplant LISTEN
  8. Finding a Donor LISTEN
  9. Umbilical Cord Blood LISTEN
  10. Age as a Factor LISTEN
  11. How Long will the Procedure and Recovery Take? LISTEN
  12. Transplant for Solid Tumors LISTEN
  13. Who is a Candidate for the Procedure? LISTEN
  14. Hope for the Future LISTEN

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Andrew Schorr:

Hello and thank you for joining us once again on Patient Power. Every two weeks we do a new program on mdanderson.org connecting you with renowned cancer experts, the latest in cancer medicine. We have a lot to talk about tonight. First, let's kind of orient you. So when you develop cancer, what's happened? So in a sense your immune system has let you down. You know, we're making new cells all the time, so let's think of our body as sort of little copier machines going on making new cells. Well, sometimes in the case of cancer the copy machine can kind of break down. Now it is producing a copy with a big streak down part of it, and it's not useable, and the machine won't shut off, and it's making cancer cells, and it's making more and more.

And normally when you make a bad copy in a healthy person your immune system says, oop, bad copy, zap, gets rid of it, gets the copy machine on track, away you go. But when we develop cancer, as I did with leukemia, my immune system didn't recognize the bad copies, and I started making too many bad copies of lymphocytes in my case. And there are all sorts of leukemias, and lymphomas, other blood-related cancers we'll talk about tonight. Now, those cancers for a number of years it increasingly get perfected, one of the approaches is to in a sense give you a rebooted immune system or even somebody else's immune system, and we'll learn more about how that works in what used to be called bone marrow transplant but increasingly now we call stem cell transplant.

Well, all of this can kind of be lingo and concepts you've never thought about until you get a serious diagnosis. It could be acute lymphocytic or lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, a chronic leukemia like mine, CLL, or CNL, or various lymphoma or multiple myeloma, and there are other illnesses too. And you start hearing this lingo. Well, in today's program we're going to decipher all that. We're going to demystify all that.

But first let's talk to somebody who faced this when he was 45 years old. Joining us from Warren, New Jersey is Eddie Melanda. Now you're 48. I have to say there's going to be a happy story we're going to tell, but you go back three years ago, Eddie, and you became a pretty sick guy. You had terrible fatigue, right?

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