Overview- Medical Jargon

Overview of Dree's procedure

I went ahead and cut and paste Adrianna's procedure just so everyone knows exactly what is going on.  I will be sending brief updates via text or Facebook. Also after this post I will post a more personal outline and what our next week will look like. Please keep us in prayer we love you all and miss you dearly! 

Low-dose chemotherapy and radiation, followed by a stem cell transplant that uses umbilical cord blood as the stem cell source, in patients who cannot tolerate a standard transplant treatment. Standard transplant treatments use higher doses of drugs and radiation and different types of drugs.

The doses  of chemotherapy and irradiation therapy you receive are low and work to suppress the cells of the immune system so that the new cells can grow in or engraft.  This type of transplant will rely on the new  immune system to destroy the remaining  cells.  In this type of transplant, there is a time when there is a mixture of your immune system and the  donor’s immune system.  This is called mixed chimerism.   

Treatment for autoimmune diseases may include drugs that suppress the immune system as well as therapies that target specific organs affected. There are no known cures for autoimmune diseases. In some cases, however, stem cell transplants are used to prevent the progression of the disease and to lessen symptoms.

Conditioning
To treat blood or immune system diseases using a transplant, doctors first give the patient chemotherapy, radiation, or both. This process is called Conditioning.


Chemotherapy
Using high-potency drugs that target quickly dividing cells and destroy them. Some of the healthy cells (such as hair follicles, cells in the lining of the mouth and intestines and normal bone marrow stem cells) are also quickly dividing cells, so they are killed as well—their destruction results in some of the side effects patients experience.