The University of Kansas Health System is treating a total of 6 COVID patients today, 9 Wednesday. Other significant numbers:
- 4 with the active virus today, 6 Wednesday
- 1 in ICU, 2 Wednesday
- 0 on a ventilator, 0 Wednesday
Key points from today’s guests:
Sue Flach, stem cell recipient
- Sue had a blood disorder for a while and then two years ago, it had progressed to myelofibrosis which turned into leukemia.
- Sue was put on a stem cell donor registry because she needed a transplant to save her.
- She and Adam were able to meet in person this past June and she is so appreciative of him and his family for giving her the gift of life.
- Sue is feeling 90 percent back to normal and encourages others to sign up to be donors.
Adam Schroeder, stem cell donor
- A firefighter in Texas, Adam joined the stem cell donor registry more than 10 years ago to help someone else in the community.
- He wasn’t a match for that patient, but got a call nine years later that he was a match for Sue.
- As a first responder, Adam had no hesitation to help save someone’s life.
- “You're helping somebody that has a life threatening disease and all you have to do is go get some blood taken. It's not it's nothing for me compared to what she had to go through.”
Dr. Sunil Abhyankar, hematologist & oncologist, The University of Kansas Cancer Center; director, Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center
- When a person voluntarily donate their stem cells, there are two ways of donating the stem cells. The old method was where we actually go into the hip bone under anesthesia and aspirate out the bone marrow stem cells and then collect them in a bag.
- But over the past few years, more and more donations are being done from the blood. We have been given a growth factor injection for four days, that makes the stem cells come out into the blood and we can harvest them.
- Sue had an aggressive situation, so when that happens, we prefer the stem cells to be obtained from the donor’s blood instead of the bone marrow because when we get the cells from the blood, we can get cells from all the bone marrow space in the in our body.
- If we have a greater number of stem cells, then that helps the donor cells actually take into the into the patient's body and because we have these high these mutations, we want the donor cells to do their job quickly and kill off those bad cells that were in Sue's bone marrow.
Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director, infection prevention & control, The University of Kansas Health System
- While COVID cases are increasing in some parts of the country, the term “surge” may be a little dramatic.
- It is important to have increased surveillance in testing wastewater – it can detect increased COVID circulation.
- The new monovalent booster vaccine will be coming out soon and vaccines have been shown to be effective against hospitalization.
Monday, Aug. 7 at 8 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. For Pam Wilson, the worst part of cancer was everything AFTER the treatment. Graft Versus Host Disease sent her back to the hospital again and again. Sometimes survivorship is the hardest part.
We’ll show you how Pam faced her complications -- both physical and psychological.
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