Frank Vollmer Perseverance

February 8, 2017 Frank was diagnosed with Hodgkins  Lymphoma.  After receiving chemo and radiation treatments from March - July, he was fortunate enough to have kicked the cancer.   However,  as a result of the chemo/ratdiation treatments he developed a new disease called Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). This condition has made the last 8 months very difficult with 3 hospital stays and numerous blood and platelet transfusions.  Left untreated the MDS  will likely result in leukemia.  The only treatment for MDS is a bone marrow transplant.  As some of you may already know, Frank had a heart transplant back in 1991.  So this added a little complication to the whole process.  We searched for a doctor or program in the country that had any experience performing a bone marrow transplant on a heart transplant patient.  Fortunately, we met Dr. Antin at Dana Farber in Boston, MA who has sucessfully treated one other patient like Frank.  Even better, Dr. Antin was willing to take on Frank’s case.  


Fast forward, after a few visits to Boston and a search for the best donor option, a decision to use Christian as Frank’s perfect half match donor was reached.   Frank and I know this won’t be an easy journey but it’s a short term investment that will hopefully yield us a long term return.  We are relocating for the summer to Boston, leaving the children and Biscuit behind with family.  Truthfully, being away from our kids is the hardest part.


For any of you who know Frank or myself, we don’t like to share a lot, but do realize that we have so many friends, family and coworkers that care and would like updates so we are going to try Caring Bridge out.  We will do our best to make entries often to keep everyone posted.