T minus 3 days

Last night's chemo infusion was uneventful, however that chemo is causing Annette's blood counts to drop. She is more tired today than she has been but still managed to get her 20 daily laps with Katie.  This morning, they gave her a four-hour infusion of Prograf, an immunosuppressant drug.  While a typical organ transplant requires Prograf to keep your body from rejecting the new organ, for a bone marrow transplant it is reversed: your blood sees your existing organs as foreign and attacks them.  This is called graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) and is one of the most serious side effects of a BMT.  We're hoping the match Annette has with her brother Carl will minimize the chance of GVHD.  She has chemo again this evening and will have a long day of multiple infusions tomorrow beginning with a new drug Melphalan around 10 am.