“After your chemotherapy, you will need a stem cell transplant.” With these few words, Dr. Seah Lim turned my world upside down. Except for a painless lima bean sized lymph node under my left jaw, I was fine. As a diagnostic radiologist at Baptist St. Anthony’s Hospital, my role was to help patients, not be a patient myself.

In December ’05, I learned that my small lymph node and my bone marrow contained Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a moderately aggressive B cell lymphoma. Receiving one’s own stem cells after chemotherapy had been a treatment used after relapse. More recent studies had suggested that early stem cell transplant offered a better chance of longer term survival. This is where Coffee Memorial Blood Center (CMBC) entered my life to give me a future.

Before the bone marrow eradication treatment, I was hooked up at CMBC to an apheresis machine. For 5–6 hours a day for four days, all of my blood was circulated several times through the apheresis unit which separated white blood cells, including the rare circulating stem cells, from red blood cells and platelets. By the end of the fourth day, enough white blood cells had been harvested so that the stem cells could be retrieved for my transplant.

Thanks to the services and staff of Coffee Memorial, all aspects of my successful stem cell transplant were done here in Amarillo as an outpatient. Peter, my husband, and I were spared long exhausting trips to down state medical centers. During the three weeks after the transplant when my stem cells were repopulating my depleted bone marrow, CMBC again came to my aid by providing the platelet and red blood cell transfusions I needed to overcome the risks of bleeding and anemia.

Without the services of the Coffee Memorial Blood Center and the grace of God, I could not have returned to work full time in June ’06, exchanging the role of patient back for that of physician. Thank You!