Nick Asoian’s Recovery

Nate getting his bone marrow harvested

Well guys it's happened, I've had my second bone marrow transplant. This past Wednesday the 24th of March my immune system was reborn, again. This time was with help from my brother Nate who turned out to be a perfect ten out of ten donor match for me. Not only was this news very exciting but it was accompanied with the news of my first clean PET scan. This meant that I would be going into this transplant in the best possible shape, with the best possible odds of beating this disease once and for all. Unfortunately on Nate's end it meant missing some races and training for which I would like to thank him immensely. So pretty much how it would work this time is that Nate would get a shot called Nupogen which helped his body to produce enough extra marrow that it could be harvested. Once his blood counts were sufficiently high he came in the University of Colorado Hospital and got "harvested". This consisted of him sitting for two days with an IV in each arm and being unable to do anything. When they had collected enough cells for me they brought the bone marrow upstairs gave it strait to me. I am now what they call Day +5 which means five days from the date of transplant. So far everything is looking as it should and the doctors seem to be happy. At the moment all of my blood counts are dipping downwards, which they expect, in order for Nate's cells to take over. The process is so detailed and at such a small genetic level that although I started this process as blood type O+ I will end with Nate's blood type of A+ I still have a week or more left here in the hospital which will put me about three weeks or so total. From there I will be moving in which my great friend Mel in Cherry Creek for a few months until the doc says I can head back home to Vail. Thank you everyone that has been calling and keeping up with me, it means a lot to get a text or phone call when I'm stuck here in the hospital. I hope you are all well and be looking for me back out there on the motorcycles this summer! Nick