Michael Szydel Logaday

The Journey to Bone Marrow Transplant



The journey started about 2004 when my breathing started to get difficult . Spent a lot of time going to Veterans Hospital in Iron Mountain, Mi doing testing and getting inhalers. They seemed to to help at first but over the years the effectiveness deminished.  I started to get very short of breath and very tired in the early part of the day.  The years of 2011, 2012 and 2013 were filled with many visits to the doctors office mostly for infection, at one time the thought it was Lymms desiese but tested negative. Seems i couldnt get over a cold or the flu and i would have a sinues infection.I would get antibiotics but as soon as i stopped the infection was back. In 2013 boils started showing up on my face,back of my neck and back. The doctors thought I was MERSA carrier, MERSA is a super bug but was tested and that was negative. They treated me with more and different antibiotics but i was having reactions to them. All this time I was getting weaker and weaker more naps were needed to get thru the day. On July 15, 2015 my blood counts were very high this got me a trip to the Emergency room they were going to administer iv antibiotics. The ER doctor examined me and determined that it was not a bacterial problem but more likely a cellar problem. He ran a few more blood test and came ba ck with a diagnoses of "Philadelphia negative chronic myloide leukemia" . I was relieved that they finally put a name to it. I new the name Leukemia was cancer but didn't know how it worked or if it was treatable. On July 17 2015 i had a appointment with the oncologist  and he started me on chemotherapy pill form. Was feeling somewhat better but still weak but continued taking chemo for a year. In June of 2016 started on a new drug that would not be so hard on me but it didn't work so back on the chemo I went. In July 2016 the cancer started to get more aggresive. There was talk of putting me in the hospital and infusing me with chemo to stop the growth of the cancer. Some more blood test and another bone marrow biopsy revealed the cancer was aggressive and the prognoses was not good, On august 21 2016 i decided to see if i was a candidate for a stem cell transplant. With   a few more test and a few more test it was determined that i qualified for a transplant.



So Here We go.



Thanks for Giving a Care

Mike



P.S.

Special thanks to my sister Elaine who provided the stem cells. xoxo

I left all the good stuff out like having the diareha and shitting my pants, having surgery on my face to remove boils and having such a foul mood that i couldnt like my self.