by NStewart on Fri Nov 15, 2013 3:22 pm
You need to talk with each of these cancer centers and ask your questions. I was in the hospital for 17 days from the time of my admission for melphalan infusion to discharge. After discharge from the hospital, usually the local oncologist can do the follow-up appointments for blood work, etc. The cancer center will want to see your mother on a periodic basis. She will need to go to the cancer center prior to the transplant for the stem cell harvesting, but most of the testing she should probably be able to do locally.
Any of the other cancer centers on the East Coast would be a good distance from your mother. I'm assuming from the recommendations that she lives in North Carolina. But, there are lots of extremely good transplant centers up and down the East Coast: Emory in Atlanta; Johns Hopkins in Baltimore (they won't store stem cells that aren't used immediately); Abramson at Penn in Philadelphia, John Theurer in Hackensack, NJ; Sloan-Kettering, Mt. Sinai, Weill-Cornell in NYC; and the one in Boston whose name has escaped me at the moment; and Mayo in Florida. There may be more, but those are the ones that I'm most familiar with. They all do multiple transplants per year and have excellent and well known myeloma specialist teams.
I had my transplant at Abramson Cancer Center at Penn in Philadelphia and was pleased with my experience. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't awful. Fortunately I live about 1 mile from the cancer center, so I didn't have to worry about traveling or housing. Many of the centers do have lists of options for discounted housing if it is needed. You can also contact the American Cancer Society and inquire about whether they have any Hope Lodges in the vicinity of the hospital where your mother decides to do her transplant. They have very discounted housing available for people and their families while receiving cancer treatment away from home.
I know that your mother will make a good decision for herself.
Nancy in Phila
