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But this whole idea of getting someone else’s stem cells placed in me felt like “weird science,” the thought that I could have someone else’s stem cells put into my body and that they would create an entirely new immune system from scratch. But I also knew the risks, the biggest one being something called GVHD or “graft vs. host disease” where the stem cells aren’t able to acclimate to a new body. In order to avoid this from happening, I was given more chemotherapy as well as blasted with “full body irradiation” to get rid of my existing marrow and immune system. Frankly, I was somewhat resentful about the whole process because I was feeling pretty good that my immune system had recovered and kicked the leukemia and I was in remission. This new process would basically have me starting from scratch. And it wasn’t fun.

So on October 2nd, I had my stem cell transplant. It wasn’t that different from chemotherapy really as it basically was a 30-40 minute transfusion of someone else’s stem cells and it was very similar to a blood transfusion, of which I’ve had many. The problem is that I immediately contracted a stomach virus known as C. diff that had a huge effect on my stomach, pretty much had me running to the bathroom every 15 minutes, to be honest and not trying to be gross. But I got over it and after three weeks in the hospital, I was released and the stem cell seemed to be doing a good job creating a brand new immune system. My white blood cells were going up as were my other blood counts, my appetite started to come back and I was starting to feel good.





One of the big milestones for a stem cell transplant patient is Day 100 and I just passed that landmark… unfortunately, things started to get bad again as I contracted Epstein-Barr, which is a sort of mono, the C.Diff came back and I started having full-blown GVHD. It sucked because I felt I was making progress and now I was back at Square One. I’ve been back in the hospital a few times the last couple weeks…. Last week was a nightmare where I really felt they did a number on me but this current readmit I’m feeling optimistic that they’ll figure things out and make me better.

Oh, and I should add that during my nine months of treatment, I’ve remained actively writing. In fact, I have only missed about five or six of my Weekend Warrior columns as I took off much of October and early November. But once my chemo was done I felt like my brain was back to being sharp enough to write again and I’ve felt really good about some of the stuff I’ve written. Also, during the last nine months, I have travelled down to Washington, D.C. and did interviews overlooking the White House, went to New York City for a junket for The Wolverine and I even went to the Toronto Film Festival for a few days and got to see a few movies and do some interviews there. So yeah, I definitely have done my best to follow my personalized motto, “When life throws you leukemia… make leukemi-ade”… I even have a custom T-shirt that would probably get me sued by Kool-Aid if I tried to make more of them.

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