Autografts
A booklet for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and their families
Book Four
Text & Illustrations by Simone Thomason
Cover artwork by Navada Currie
You can read this booklet below, or download it here.
Blood Cell Transplants: Autografts, A Booklet for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and their families, is book four in a series of five educational booklets. The booklets are primarily visual teaching tools, designed to meet the comprehension needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients, diagnosed with a blood cancer, and their families. This resource may also benefit all patients, including cultural and linguistically diverse people groups whose main language is not English.
Disclaimer: This booklet is not intended to provide or be a replacement for medical advice. Text and illustrations © Simone Thomason, 2020. Cover artwork © Navada Currie, 2022. ISBN:978-0-6486980-0-5
Acknowledgements: The author would like to express sincere thanks to patients and families, co-workers, colleagues, friends and family whom have supported and provided encouragement throughout the compilation of these booklets. In particular those whom took time out of their busy schedules to review, critique and provide feedback on the booklets at various stages of their development, including: Dr Ferenc Szabo; Dr Akash Kalro; Dr Tina Noutsos; Hayley Williams; Barbara Smith; Robyn Jones; Barbara Cox; Cheryl Hooper; Mary Copp; Jean Murphy; Helen Kennon; Mally McLellan; Joyce Crombie; Tania Wakefield; Myrtle Weldon; Lesley Versteegh; and my husband, Martin Thomason.
The Leukaemia Foundation uses real-life stories to provide education, inspiration and hope. If you have an experience of blood cancer you’d like to share, please email [email protected]
5
The doctors, blood nurse, ILO and interpreter will sit with you and your family and talk about the next treatment, called a young blood cell transplant.
Your family back home can be on the TV link or phone.
6
Some blood cancers are hard to get rid of with just chemo. So, you will need a young blood cell transplant also called a stem cell transplant.
The word transplant means to swap one thing with another. This transplant means your blood is collected then given back to you, after chemo to help you get well.
7
This transplant may not be able to be given to you in the hospital where you are.
Hospitals in the large cities do the transplants. They have more people there to help.
Transplants can take weeks to months to do.
You and a family member will leave country and travel to the transplant hospital. When you get there, you will stay in a hostel near the hospital.
8
You will meet another hospital team called the “transplant” team, they will be expecting you
They will explain what will happen to you and your family.
You will talk to these doctors and nurses over the TV link before you travel for the transplant.
There will be church ministers, language speakers – Interpreters and ILOs to help you there too.
9
In the transplant hospital you will have more scans and tests before the transplant starts.
After everything has been told to you, you will need to sign a consent form for the transplant.
You will have more chemo and get a special tube inserted into your chest for this chemo.
You may have chemo in the day unit or in the hospital room, the transplant nurse will tell you where.
10
The young blood cells that live inside your large bones are special cells called stem cells which can grow to be any blood cell your body needs.
These young blood cells don’t have the cancer in them.
11
You will need to have special medicine through a needle given under the skin every day for a few days.
You can give yourself the needles or the nurse can do it for you.
This medicine works on your bones and moves the young blood cells from your bones into your blood.
This medicine can make your bones a bit achy. The nurses will give you pain relief tablets for the ache.
12
This picture shows the inside of your body, where the young blood cells are moving out of your hip bones and into your blood in your veins.
You will have blood tests every day, to see when you have enough young blood cells in your blood.
13
When you have enough young/stem cells in your blood you go onto a machine, like the one in this picture. Your family member can be with you when you are on the machine.
Being on the machine does not hurt you. This machine spins your blood and separates a small amount of your young blood cells into a bag.
You will need to be attached to the machine for a few hours over 1-3 days.
A tube may be put in your neck to help collect your cells.
14
After the machine you have a few days rest, before having chemo in the day unit.
Then you go into hospital and your bag of young blood cells (stem cells) will be given back to you.
You will be in a special room to protect you from germs.
Your family won’t be able to stay in hospital with you, but they can visit every day. You will be in hospital for weeks, to heal from the chemo.
The chemo can make you feel tired, you may have mouth sores, vomit, or get running poos. The nurses will give you medicines to help you get better.
15
Before the chemo and stem cells are given to you, a special tube (Hickman catheter) will need to be inserted into a vein in your chest.
You will have medicine to numb the area before the tube is put in.
16
Day 0 is the day you get your stem cells given back to you.
Day 1 onwards is the time the young blood cells move from your blood back into your bones.
When the stem cells are in your bones, they grow older and go to work.
17
It will take a month or more for your cells to start working.
You will stay in hospital until you have enough working cells.
You will need to have bags of blood to keep you strong while you wait for your young blood cells to work.
18
You will need to do all the same things you did when you first had chemo.
19
Having a transplant can be a long treatment.
If you have worries, talk to the nurses caring for you, they can get the Church Minister, Interpreter, or ILO, to come see you.
20
You will have a blood test every day to see how you are healing.
When you have enough working blood cells, you leave hospital and go to the hostel nearby.
You will travel in from the hostel to the hospital a few times a week to see the transplant team and have a blood test.
When your blood is fully healed and strong you will return back home to country.
21
Back home you will need to have check-ups and blood tests with your doctor in the community.
You will also need to leave country to see your blood doctor back at the city hospital for check-ups.
Having the transplant will change your immune system. You will have to start your vaccination needles again. These are the needles you had when you were a baby and child, which stop you getting sicknesses such as measles and mumps.
Your doctor in the community can give these to you.
22
For two years after the transplant, it is best not to try and have children. The chemo you had will cause the baby to get sick and not form well inside the mother.
When having sex, to stop getting pregnant you or your partner need to use a condom.
After two years and if you are ready to have children, you may have sperm or eggs saved at the fertility doctors, which you can use to have children with your partner.
You can talk to your doctor about this.
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