Roger Harris Roger Harris

During the summer of 2015 Roger began to feel ill and starting losing a large amount of weight without reason. He was also having side pains and feeling more tired than normal. He decided to meet with his primary doctor, and they began to run various tests. After multiple meetings with his doctor, Roger was admitted to St. Luke's South Hospital after falling very ill in the beginning of November. After a week stay in the hospital that November, Roger was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. From the multiple myeloma Roger was in kidney failure. He had a stent inserted to help with kidney function, and then under went multiple kidney stone treatments. Roger has recently undergone chemotherapy for the past 4 months. Things have been going smoothly with only a complication of a blood clot that formed in his leg. This has been managed by the help of blood thinners. This past week Roger met with his doctors, and they are confident he is in remission. Today, Roger met with his transplant team to discuss their next plan of action. Roger will go in for pretesting next week to make sure he is healthy enough for the transplant. The following week he will start the drugs that will help release the stem cells from the bone marrow into his blood. The week after that,  the transplant team will begin to harvest his stem cells. These stem cells will be frozen while the doctors use chemotherapy to prepare him for the stem cell transplant. The chemotherapy will destroy the cancer cells and make room for the bone marrow to produce new stem cells. Once Roger has completed his chemotherapy, he will have the stem cell transplant. The stem cell harvesting, chemotherapy and transplant will take 4-6 weeks.  On behalf of my dad and my family, we are so thankful and appreciative of all the love and support we have received during this time. We are hopeful we will have more good news to share soon.