After the frustration of my last visit, I was pretty eager to know whether the German donor was a good match or not. The previous tests had already established the donor to be compatible, but now more detailed molecular tests would show if he would be a good candidate for BMT donor.

Unfortunately I managed to peak at the results before my consultation and saw that he wasn't a good match. That was the hardest bit of news I've had to take since we discovered that Michael wasn't a match. The consultation was once again with the 'Professor', but I felt pretty detached.

The Prof already knew of my interest and dilemmas regarding the use of STI (see previous entry), and mentioned that in a recent poll at a conference, opinions were nearly equally divided between using STI long term, before a transplant, and in conjunction with a transplant in the post operative phase. Not that this made a difference. Realising that there are potentially only 2 more people whose blood I can use did affect the way I felt for the rest of the day and in fact the week. It's made me do more thinking, and seemed to serve as a reminder that I may have been getting a bit complacent about my situation.

Despite the news, I explained that I was ready to have the BMT, and that it was still my preferred option of treatment. I found out that it would still be possible to use the German donor's blood if the other 2 bloods were even less compatible. I'll have to find out more about this to confirm as I was not in a very lucid state of mind.

I also learned that STI would get UK regulatory approval sooner than initially expected and might be available in the UK before the end of the year. Whether it becomes available on the NHS is another matter, but the results of the ongoing trials are looking just as promising as they were at the outset. This is another area I'll have to monitor.

The blood was looking good as has become the norm recently, but I'll need to get a copy of the results as I've lost mine. They were pretty much the same as March's results (see below).