First visit to the Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplant Unit at the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital (about an hour from home on the Gold Coast) was a rude shock. The sight of multiple, massive waiting rooms full of sick people smacked me in the face like an icy breeze and I wanted to run. It’s not been so long since I was one of those people and I’d hoped my time as such was done.
I’d been referred to Associate Professor Dr Glen Kennedy. Luckily for me, a man I could be very direct with and enjoyed an instant rapport. He understood my ‘need to know’ and that taking the softly softly approach was not necessary – a great start given we’re talking about life and death.
I was not surprised when he delivered statistics giving me a survival time frame of somewhere between 3-9 years if my MDS was left untreated. Learning how quickly this disease could progress to Acute Myeloid Leukaemia was troubling and my gut instinct was quietly screaming ‘pay attention Kate, this may be the path you’re headed along’. I chose to keep that to myself.
The consultation finished with some wise words and a very strong take home message from Dr K – ‘You will see a transplant in your lifetime Kate, you won’t survive without one.’
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