Part Five - New Blood

Chapter 13

The Transplant

A stem cell transplant is both a medical procedure and a long process of surrender.

The cells arrive in a bag and enter through a line. From the outside, the moment can appear surprisingly ordinary.

But the surrounding days involve conditioning treatment, immune suppression, medication, infection precautions, and the deliberate creation of space for donor cells to take root.

My existing immune system had to be subdued.

The donor cells had to enter.

Then everyone had to wait.

January 5, 2026

I checked into Juravinski for conditioning chemotherapy.

Of course, I brought a guitar.

Some things are essential.

The hospital room felt familiar and unfamiliar. I knew the identification bands, medication lists, vital signs, early-morning bloodwork, and repeated questions.

But this admission had a different purpose.

During induction, chemotherapy had attacked leukemia and allowed my marrow to recover.

This time, conditioning treatment would prepare my body to receive another person’s stem cells.

The goal was not merely to restart the old blood factory.

It was to establish a new one.

January 6, 2026

Our family already had a plastic dinosaur and fifty hidden yellow rubber duckies.

Now we had a new animal:

A perpetually astonished rubber chicken.

It was larger and considerably harder to hide, but it would enter the family rotation. For the moment, I was its caretaker—even in hospital.

That day I received medication derived from rabbit proteins to prepare my immune system for transplant.

Afterward, I should have been qualified to work as the Easter Bunny.

I also hoped it might slow my receding hare line.

The treatment was serious.

The joke was necessary.

January 7, 2026

I made it through the first round of conditioning medication with almost no reaction.

Many people experience significant reactions.

That day’s gratitude arrived in a specific package:

No major reaction.

I would take it.

The Day Before

The largest decisions had been made.

The donor had given.

The cells were travelling through a system designed to deliver them safely.

Conditioning treatment was preparing my body.

My remaining task was to receive.

Receiving had become one of the central disciplines of the journey:

Receive medicine.

Receive blood.

Receive help.

Receive difficult information.

Receive encouragement.

Receive rest.

Now I would receive stem cells from someone I had never met.

January 8, 2026

The stem cells arrived.

They entered my body through the Hickman line while nurses monitored the process.

I felt pretty good.

Mostly, I felt grateful.

Some moments are dramatic in ways that do not look dramatic from the outside.

There was a bag of cells hanging from a pole. There was tubing. There were two nurses quietly doing their work.

There was no bright flash or orchestra.

And yet life was entering my body in a new way.

A gift from a stranger.

A chance at more years.

A new blood factory beginning its work.

Grafting as Faith

The cells had arrived.

Now they needed to graft.

They could not remain visitors. They needed to settle into the marrow and begin producing life.

The medical team could create favourable conditions, provide medication, monitor results, and respond to complications.

The donor had supplied the cells.

My body had to receive them.

Then we waited.