Chapter 12 - The Road to Transplant

The road to transplant involved more than agreeing that transplant sounded reasonable.

Every significant medical concern had to be examined.

Although a prostate biopsy had been negative, the doctors remained concerned about a mark on my prostate. A PET-PSMA scan offered another way to investigate it.

Financial approval was not automatic. Without it, I might have needed to travel and pay privately.

While Leslie and I were meeting with the doctors, approval came through.

One moment, the scan represented another barrier.

The next, the path opened.

Grace did not arrive as the final answer.

It arrived as access to the next test.

Choosing Transplant

After reviewing the evidence and listening to the medical team, Leslie and I agreed that transplant offered the best chance of avoiding relapse.

I really did not want to repeat the leukemia adventure.

Agreeing to proceed was not a brave movie-scene decision with swelling music.

It was more like a sober nod across a medical office.

We had fears and questions.

We also had evidence, counsel, and enough peace to move forward.

Sometimes faith looks like accepting the harder road because it offers the best chance at more life.

The Donor

When the possibility of a stem cell transplant was first discussed, it was said that the best donors were either siblings or children.

As it happened, my younger sister was in Canada, and while all three of my kids were willing, the hospital chose our youngest since they would each be similar, and in the case of stem cells, the younger the donor the better.

Unfortunately, both my sister and my son only matched the biological markers 50%. 100% was the ideal match to reduce the potential of remission.

A fully matched donor had been identified through the international registry. Who would have thought that such a resource existed? Before cancer, I certainly did not.

Somewhere was a person whose biological markers aligned closely enough with mine to offer the possibility of a new blood-producing system.

I did not know the donor’s name, history, family, occupation, or reasons for registering.

Naturally, I asked whether the donor had a full head of hair and whether I might benefit from that.

The doctors laughed.

Apparently, hair restoration was not among the promised outcomes.

It was still worth asking.

The donor could not see Leslie, our children, grandchildren, Mountain Crew, or medical team. They did not know about the guitar, camera, birds, burger, dinosaur, or questionable puns.

But they had agreed to give cells capable of becoming part of my future.

A Taste of Freedom

On December 8, I began Onureg, a maintenance chemotherapy pill intended to keep the leukemia in remission while the transplant timing was finalized.

My PICC line also came out.

After five months of dangly bits, catheter-free felt like a holiday.

Having the line removed was more emotional than I expected.

It was only tubing.

Only a medical necessity.

But it had been part of my body’s landscape for months.

Through that line had travelled chemotherapy, medication, hydration, blood, platelets, and countless blood samples.

When it slid out, I felt a small taste of freedom.

Not complete freedom.

Not yet.

But some things attached to this season would not remain attached forever.

December 9, 2025

The transplant was likely to happen in early January, depending on the scan results.

The greatest upcoming discipline would be isolation from people and infection risks for several months.

Not exactly my preferred social calendar.

I am an introvert, but even introverts have standards.

There is a difference between choosing a quiet day and being medically instructed to avoid people because an ordinary infection could become dangerous.

Isolation would protect me.

It would also cost something.

The Last Public Night

Before isolation began, musicians I had played with over the years joined me at Westside Church Burlington for a night of musical worship.

It would be my last public outing for several months.

Music reached places ordinary words could not.

The evening held gratitude, fear, friendship, worship, and farewell without requiring every emotion to be explained.

My nephew and his family attended. One of his boys rushed toward me for a hug with Uncle Kevin.

It crushed me to say that I could not hug him because my immune system was already weakened.

Appropriately, the song I led that night was Brandon Lake’s “Gratitude.”

Within weeks, my world would narrow to a hospital room, a Hickman catheter protruding from my chest, conditioning medication, transplant, hotel isolation, monitoring, and waiting.

Before that narrowing began, music allowed the world to become wider.