My name is Bryan Bedard. My daughter Katie is the inspiration behind this web site and the organization that supports it, the Katelyn Bedard Bone Marrow Association. I’d like to share the story with you of when I donated stem cells. I hope that telling this story will help put to rest any fears someone might have if they were ever called to donate.

We never found a bone marrow donor for Katie. Because of this, we decided to try an experimental transplant option called a “haplo” transplant. A haplo transplant is when the donor is only half matched to the recipient. Parents are always at least half matched to their children meaning that either my wife Joanne or I could be used as donors for Katie’s haplo transplant. After some testing, it was decided that I would be the donor.

For haplo transplants stem cells are collected from the blood stream of the donor and infused into the patient. Stem cells are found in the bone marrow. To get a large quantity of stem cells into their blood stream, donors are given a special drug called Neupogen. Neupogen stimulates the production of stem cells. It causes your body to produce so many stem cells that your marrow fills up and they spill out into your blood stream making it easy to collect them.

I started taking injections of Neupogen about 5 days before the stem cell collection date. Neupogen injections are subcutaneous meaning they go under the skin. I had to get a shot of Neupogen once a day. Katie was still in the hospital at the time, so her doctor would come by each day and give me the shot. It would sting a little bit at first but it only lasted 30 seconds so it really wasn’t a big deal. It made Katie smile to see dad getting a shot. She got more than a couple shots while she was in the hospital and finally it was someone else’s turn.

After a few days of taking Neupogen, my bones started to feel a little achy. This is perfectly normal. As your body starts to produce lots of stem cells and your bone marrow fills up it causes a bit of pressure inside which can be a little uncomfortable. Although I found this to be quite minor and barely noticeable, some people feel quite a bit of pain from this and take a painkiller such as Tylenol 3 to ease the pain. Most people that take Neupogen say they feel a little tired and achy.

The day of the stem cell collection was very exciting for us. Katie’s primary care was out of London, Ontario but we had to travel to a hospital in Toronto, Ontario for the collection. We had traveled to Toronto the night before and stayed in a nice hotel. I was under instructions to make sure I had a big breakfast before coming in and to include a glass of milk (for the calcium… more on that later). I was more than happy to indulge and had a delicious huge breakfast in the hotel restaurant. After breakfast, we headed over the hospital and went up to the stem cell collection unit.

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