Bone Marrow Transplant or Stem Cell Transplant

A bone marrow transplant is an amazing process, involving both the miracle of natural processes and medical science. A stem cell transplant is a version of a bone marrow transplant, which I'll explain below.

I am a leukemia patient scheduled for a stem cell transplant within the next three weeks, which will replace my bone marrow.

I am not a doctor. This is just a general overview of bone marrow transplants based on my research and what I've been told by the nurses and doctors who are treating me. It is written from the perspective of someone who is about to go through one!

All your blood cells are made in your bone marrow. When you're born, all your bones have marrow. As you age, your bones stiffen, and only your hips, torso, and cranium have marrow.

There are three types of blood cells:

Your bone marrow has stem cells. A stem cell (or "pluripotent" cell) is a cell that can become other types of cells. Infant stem cells can become any type of cell in the body. Your bone marrow cells, however, are what are known as hematopoeitic stem cells. They can become only blood cells, but they can become any kind of blood cell.

In diseases like leukemia and lymphoma, a cell in the bone marrow becomes cancerous. Usually, it stops at an immature stage of development, then begins reproducing. Cancerous cells lose their ability to die when they're supposed to (a process called apoptosis). Thus, they begin either to crowd out other cells in the bone marrow or in the blood stream or both.

There are two major types of leukemia, chronic and acute. Acute leukemia progresses quickly and requires extreme and rapid intervention. Usually that is chemotherapy and possibly a bone marrow transplant, which will be explained in a moment.

Chronic leukemia is more slow-moving. It is treated with medications. If I understand correctly (and I might not because I have acute leukemia), doctors normally don't treat it with a bone marrow transplant because the transplant and preparation for it are more likely to be fatal than the leukemia is!

I'm going to focus on acute leukemia.

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Bone Marrow Transplant or Stem Cell Transplant