Chris Fling’s Health Update Web Site

Daily Updates On How My Bone Marrow Transplant Is Progressing.

My name is Chris Fling, I'm 22 years old, and I have graduated from Lincoln Park High School. Here is the story of my battle with cancer. It all started in October 2001. At this time I was going to school at The University Of Michigan-Dearborn and working part time at Circuit City. One day my father, Bernie, came home from the doctor and told my mother, Mary Ann, and I that he had lung cancer. He started to undergo chemotherapy treatment in November 2001. Beginning in December I started to feel ill. I had a sharp pain in my side and I became light headed when walking. On December 14th I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Leukemia. The doctor then admitted me to Riverside Hospital for chemotherapy. I was hospitalized for 25 days and was told that I would have to stop going to school and working for at least 5 months. After my hospitalization, I continued chemotherapy along with my father. For the next few months, we were hospitalized a few times to treat various infections. Towards the end of April 2002, I was able to go back to school and work, and everything was looking up. I had been in remission since January and feeling rather well. Unfortunately around December 2002, my father was doing worse. His cancer spread into his breastbone and was still growing. By this time he had tried three different types of chemo and was left with one last chemo to try to stop the cancer. Sadly, this last chemo regimen did not work for him, and his health started to get worse. Around May 2003 I was hit with a bad case of pneumonia, and was hospitalized for another month. Around this time, my father was unable to walk up the stairs and it was hard to get him to his doctor appointments. Then in June as I was released from the hospital, we had hospice come out to the home to help care for him. In August 2003 we admitted my father to a hospice home because my mother and I were unable to care for him by ourselves. Sadly, on August 13, 2003 my father passed away.

While we were caring for my father in the hospice home, I noticed my leg started to hurt very badly. I just ignored this because of what we were going through with my father, but after his funeral I went to the doctor and found out that my leg had an infection. Upon doing routine blood work when caring for this infection my doctor found out that my leukemia had relapsed. This meant that I would have to have a bone marrow transplant to be able to take control over my cancer. Setting up to have the transplant done takes time, so I started up chemotherapy to try to put my leukemia back into remission again. This seamed to work, but now, as I sit here in the beginning phases of the transplant, the doctors are telling me that the leukemia is back again. This makes the overall odds of the transplant being successful less then if my leukemia was still in a complete remission.

On February 4th I had my first bone marrow transplant. It takes three to four weeks for the transplant to "graft" and actually work. Everything was looking well, and on March 2 they told me that I would be able to get out of the hospital the next day. When that day came, the story was different. Over night my white blood count had dropped significantly. This is a sign that the graft is giving out and not going to work. The Drs. gave me different drugs to help the graft stay, but every day my white count was cut in half. My first transplant officially failed. Since then I have been in the hospital waiting for my second transplant to come. On March 25, my second transplant arrived and I had no problems with the transfusion. Now I just have to wait 10 to 14 days in the hospital and hope it grafts correctly.

With a second transplant they collect the cells differently from the donor and the cells are more mature. This means that it usually grafts in 10 to 14 days instead of 3 weeks, but this also puts me at a greater risk of getting Graft-Verses-Host-Disease.

This is a disease where the new bone marrow cells do not recognize my body as the donor's body, and thus starts to attack some of my major organs, including my lungs, liver, kidneys, GI-tract, and even skin. The doctors have medicines to control this disease, but this disease also fights off any remaining leukemia cells in my body, so they do want me to undergo some of this disease to help cure me.