I am looking for some advice on the practical side of the STC process please if anyone could share their experiences. My husband has gone through induction treatment with very good results. No detectable levels of Myeloma. He was very lucky to be diagnosed early and has no bone or kidney damage. He had his stem cells collected at the beginning of November, they collected enough for 2 treatments. Initially he said that he did not want to go ahead with the STC straight away and we were given time to think about it but have been put under quite a bit of pressure to go ahead on the basis of the longest remission times and he has now agreed for it to be scheduled in February. (Still not sure if this is the right decision). He is being treated at Addenbrookes Cambridge which has a brilliant team and we are very grateful for the care he has received up to now and the very positive results.
We have been given three options for how/where the treatment is carried out and I am not sure if this applies to other hospitals. So he can be on the ward for the 3 weeks where he will have his own room. We seem to be being steered away from this on the basis it is noisy at night ,hard to sleep and more chance of infection (although all of the options seem to include high risk of this anyway). The second option is to stay in on site accommodation where I could also stay some or all of the time where he will have his own room and bathroom and have a kitchen and living area potentially shared with another patient undergoing the same treatment. The third is to be an outpatient and just go in daily for the treatments and live at home for the duration unless have to go in to be treated for an infection. This would have been our preferred option but as we live about 30 minutes away and I don’t drive the team say this is too risky.
We have the added complication of running our own small business and having pets at home so I don’t think I can move in to the accommodation with him full time but I also don’t want him to go through it on his own. I just wondered if anyone else had been given these options and what experience they had of how the treatment panned out.
Thanks