Tanner's Journey: A good bone marrow aspiration

Monday, August 24, 2009

We went over to the hospital this morning for the bone marrow aspiration and the RN told us that when a patient is about to undergo their stem cell transplant, they have to come over for bone marrow aspirations at least two times right before the proceduer is done.

Today was the regular bone marrow aspiration and it was done by a young man named Cameron who did a very good job and didn't hurt Tanner much at all. He said he got a good draw with LOTS of spicules! YEA!! They showed us the bone and blood that was drawn from Tanner's back and you could see lots and lots of white spicules.

Cameron said that the next aspiration will be for the gene array, which is what Dr. Barlogie uses to map out Tanner's treatment. If it goes as well as today, that will be a very good thing!

Knowing that his transplant and chemotherapy is coming up later this week, Tanner wanted to go, once again, for mexican food. I never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I'm really getting tired of mexican food. LOL! Funny coming from a woman who once went on vacation in San Antonio and ate mexican food for four days straight!! But seriously, knowing that Tanner is about to get pretty weak from the treatment that is coming in his near future, I wanted to take him to eat whatever he wanted today.

I need to file some of my paperwork away but wanted to take a moment and go ahead and update about how the bone marrow aspiration went this morning. I'd better get back to work now before Burce gets me... (Just kidding!)

Recap

One summer day in 2009 my 17 year old son, Tanner Walker, decided to go swimming at a friend's house. While walking across the yard, his left leg collapsed and his tibia snapped completely in two.

Of course we were upset and worried that afternoon when I rushed him to the Emergency Room but I have to admit that the thought of cancer never entered our minds until the doctor came back into the room and told us "There's no easy was to say this other than just say it. There is a tumor in the bone".

They put Tanner in a splint and sent us home and over the next two weeks he saw several doctors who told us it "might be cancer - or it might be nothing" and eventually surgery was performed to repair the break and a biopsy was taken.

After the procedure, the surgeon came out and told us that the good news was that it wasn't cancer - but the bad news was that they didn't know what it was.

Two weeks later, my cell phone rang and it was the doctor wanting to speak to me and explain that they had found a Pathologist who had, finally, diagnosed the lesion as Multiple Myeloma. Can you imagine? I was at work and at that very moment my world, my son's world, our family's world - were all forever changed.

After a full body scan was performed Tanner was found to have hundreds - "innumerable"- lesions in the bones throughout his body and the Oncologist told me (privately) that at the stage he was at, he most likely only had two years to live.

Luckily, we were referred to the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy at UAMS in Little Rock Arkansas where Tanner underwent some of the most aggressive treatment available including chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants. Now, over three years later, he remains in full remission.

He receives maintenance treatment here locally and is back to living the life of a young man... A young man with Multiple Myeloma.

Tanner's Journey

Monday, August 24, 2009

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