We wanted to start this Caring Bridge for Amber to keep you all updated on her transplant process. Amber has developed multiple health-related conditions as a part of her immune-mediated bone marrow failure. Bone marrow failure syndromes are often overlapping, and one may lead to another. Having had aplastic anemia as a child is a precursor to further blood dysfunction and disorders. Amber has a number of these overlapping syndromes that she’s been struggling with for the last five years, the latest diagnosis being platelet dysfunction and rheumatoid arthritis as a result of MDS of undetermined cause. Amber will provide a more detailed education later, but just know that she doesn’t fit in the staging they have for MDS (I know, shocking), but it’s not a matter of if but when she will develop cancer. My cells are the ones that are now diseased in her body from the transplant when we were five in 1982. So they’re not using me as her related donor. We have consulted with many doctors, including ones up in Seattle, who hypothesize that she had leftover diseased lymphocytes from white blood cells during the second transplant. Those cells became stronger than the healthy cells I gave her, and 35 years later, they are winning. Starting in late December, she developed hematomas in her calf muscles, rendering her very disabled. This led her primary care doctor to question if her platelets were functioning correctly, and they, in fact, are not. This diagnosis is what tipped the scale towards transplant round 3. She has three 8 out of 8 non-related donors, which is unheard of considering some people have none, including their siblings. That is God at work, plain and simple. The timing of this with me currently only working from home is also God-ordained. He’s known we would walk this path at age 47 before we were born, and we rest on the truth that He holds us in His almighty hand.
Amber will provide a more detailed medically correct synopsis of everything that is happening soon, but know that preparing for this transplant is creating stress and anxiety, and that’s why we wanted to start this page so that we can get people praying for all the steps to come together to make this happen.
Kyle and I will be sharing caregiving duties, with me being the main day-to-day caregiver once she’s out of the hospital. It’s a minimum stay of usually four weeks after a transplant, but she’s been good at convincing the doctors thus far to let her out of the hospital as soon as possible, so we’ll see how long she lasts in there. We haven’t even mentioned all the other comorbidities, type 1 diabetes, and thyroid dysfunction that could complicate matters. Please specifically pray that God will allow this to be a simple process with no extra medical strain than we already have going on. More detailed information to come, including a fundraiser to help ease the financial burden on both of our families, specifically housing in Portland as she has to be 30 minutes from OHSU. Please start praying with us, and we will update again soon.
Love, Andrea and Amber ♥️
