IT IS MINI-TRANSPLANT DAY (aka Donor Lymphocyte Infusion)!!!How I like to explain this infusion: There are two bad things going on right now. The bone marrow is broken so it makes bad white blood cells. So we are dealing with an evil army, and a broken factory that makes an evil army. The stem cell transplant in the past didn't work to fix the broken factory, so now we're taking a new strategy. Instead of doing all stem cells, we are extracting just the lymphocytes. These lymphocytes like the top notch seal team white blood cells. The one downside is that these fighters are so aggressive that sometimes they also fight other things like the liver and kidney and skin in the process. They're not smart enough to always distinguish. Anyways, we are going to infuse the body with these aggressive good imported fighters, and they are going to attacked any leftover evil army, fix the broken, factory, and restore order to all!A quick history: Since August 2013, we have done 7 rounds of chemo, 6 spinal taps with chemo, policy hacking to get blood samples sent from Vietnam, radiation, a stem cell transplant, kidney stone removal, and blood transfusions across 5 hospitals in 5 different cities. For a while, we celebrated while the Leukemia went a way and those bad guys disappeared. In February 2015, we found out they must have been hibernating because they came back in full force. We were told some dismal statistics, but healthcare data is super fuzzy (Precision Medicine is still the future) so we charged forward. Two more rounds of chemo later, another trip to America for my uncle to donate cells, and now we are ready to infuse them not my mom. Woo! We won't focus on the fuzzy data around success rates, just the small victories that have allowed us to get to this point. As of today, she is strong, she is well, and ready for those new, good, lymphocyte white blood cells to go attack the bad, mutating cancer cells.
Will You Marrow Me?
Last month, I attended the Stanford Big Data in Bioscience conference. My mom had labs and a possible transfusion during one of the conference days, so I conveniently dropped her off at the Stanford Cancer Center, parked in free patient parking, and walked around the corner to attend the conference on the university campus. One moment I was on the patient side, and a couple of blocks later, I was on the provider side, talking to physicians and clinicians as my peers in this quest to bring better care to patients and better decision making capabilities to doctors. Talk about integrating work and life into one!During the conference break, I ran into the Asian American Donor Program students who were hold up a lovely sign that said "Will you marrow me?" If you have not yet, you can help save lives like Mama Pham's by going to register at Be the Match! It is a very simple process of sending in saliva samples, and if you are lucky enough to be a donor, the donation process is pretty simple as well! It just involves some lab draws, a physical exam, and several hours on an apheresis machine!