Steve Christophersen

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Steve is being treated for Multiple Myloma. He had some radiation in January, followed by four months of chemo. He is now going through a stem cell transplant at Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit. A few weeks ago, they collected healthy stem cells from his blood through a process called apheresis. Last week, on July 15th, he was admitted and will likely be there for two weeks. The first step was to give him a massive dose of chemo, administered through his PICC line (see photo). This basically kills off the the cancer, but also his other stem cells in his bone marrow, so over the next few days his blood counts will drop drastically. On Friday they put his healthy stem cells (about 2 million of them), the ones they collected and froze a few weeks ago, back into his blood stream. Over the next few days these should "graft" into his bone  marrow spaces and his bone marrow can start producing red and white blood cells, platelets and so on. The next week or so will be tough, but hopefully he will start to recover and come home around July 28th. After that, there will be months of recovery and eventually he can go back to doing all his normal activities.