What disease is this.

I had to have oil changed in my brain recently and apparently it flushed out some of the things I should remember.

What disease did my friend have? They took out some of her bone marrow from one of her long bones, cleaned it of the disease with radiation, used some other method to iirc kill all the bone marrow still in her body, and then injected back the clean marrow or its cells (which iirc you only have to put in the blood stream and it magically knows to make its home in the long bones, esp. maybe the femurs). So what did she have.

IIRC, this therapy only works for 10 or 11 years, but she's on her 16th year and still going strong. Her doctor says she's setting records, so I wanted to read more** about it, and I wanted to not sound like I don't pay attention when I talk to my close friend, her husband.

**One thing I'd like to know and maybe you folks know. If it can work for 10 years, why doesn't it work forever? Is it the original problem that recurs or something else. If the original problem, do they kill almost all the bad cells and it take up to 10 years for them to multiply enough and regroup?

Also I wonder if they can just do the treatment again.

Reply to
micky
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Disease possibly leukemia

Treat may be "autologous bone marrow transplantation "

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Reply to
""Retired"

Its a form of bone marrow transplant for some cancers. My sister had it done about 15 years ago, maybe a few more. It was considered experimental at the time. I guess cancer can always come back.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

She or her husband told me this at the 12 year mark.

since the treatment, she's gone back to working two jobs (probably less than 40 hours total), plus she plays tennis 1 or 2 times a week, because... She was about 50 when this started, and she'd gained 20, 30,

40 pounds since high school. She lost iirc 30 pounds because of the lymphoma and she liked that part. And it's true, when I saw her a year or two after the treatment, she looked like a college girl.

You got the treatment right but the disease wrong, unless these are related. But what you said was enough to find the disease, lymphoma. That's what I thought it was but when I googled that, all I found was chemotherapy.

It turns out my friend problaby had high-dose chemothermapy too, to kill "the cancerous stem cell and the healthy ones too."

The whole treatment looks arduous, and this page says it's for "lymphomas that are difficult to treat or resistant to standard therapy" and it doesn't even always work for 10 years, but the chance at 10 years or 16 seems to make it will worth it, at least if you have good insurance.

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I'm going to read this next.

I haven't found anything about longevity yet, have to work on search terms -- tomorrow -- but if I do find something about "16 years" they might well be referring to her.

About 4 years ago, her kidneys failed, and she had a transplant from her

30 or 35 year old son. That apparently is working well too. Her husband was talking about some wrist or finger that hurt that she won't tell anyone about, because she doesn't like to complain. Apparently the kidney is removed with what's that called, where the incision is very small.

Thanks \ and Ed.

Reply to
micky

Oh, yeah, she lost 20 or 30 because of lymphoma and 30 or 20 because of the kidney, something like that, so she's quite happy about that part.

Maybe there was stuff about the marrow within the articles, but all the headlines listed chemotherapy only .

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Reply to
micky

lymphoma.

May be some more info or leads to other topics?

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Reply to
Newgene McMensa

Common treatment for both Multiple Myeloma and some kinds of Lukemia.

Reply to
Clare Snyder

Probably and can also be done for sickle cell anemia.

Reply to
Frank

Thanks. Quite interesting. Written in 2000, 2 1/2 years before my friend had her treatment. So it presents the problems, which are very interesting, but doesn't say what might have been different for her.

They live in New Jersey near NYC and she went to Sloan Kettering. I don't know if that makes a difference.

Reply to
micky

The article I just read was partly about where the bad cells remain.

How is your sister?

Reply to
micky

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