My donor who lives in Germany and I are a 12×12 match which is wonderful and crazy at the same time considering my own sister is only a half match. Our differences are mainly sex and blood type. I was born an O-positive female and he’s a male with A-positive blood.
Image by allinonemovie
After having the allo transplant, when they do the bone marrow biopsy it indicates I carry the chromosomes XY now instead of xx. If you remember back in school XY is male and XX is female. So now my blood shows I’m no longer female. Now that is just the blood and not the rest of me. It’s kind of creepy and amazing if you think about it. I’m a female but I have male DNA. It’s almost like an SYFI story. It’s sometimes hard to wrap my head around the idea. I have someone else’s DNA traveling through my veins.
It’s amazing what they can do these days.
Not only that, I was born with O-positive blood and now I’m A positive just like my donor. Again, it’s incredible what the world of science is capable of doing. Just think about what they will be able to do in the future.
I’ve told many people over the last year I’ve received so many blood transfusions my blood isn’t mine anyway. But, that’s the whole point of doing a stem cell transplant is to get rid of my bone marrow that is defective and replace it with someone else’s bone marrow that isn’t defective.
The changing of blood type is very common and usually doesn’t take as long to change as mine has. I have read others who said it happened about three to four months after transplant but with me, I’ve needed transfusion along the way which reinstates my blood type. I’ve actually gone without transfusions over the last few months allowing the blood type to finally make the switch.
I wonder if blood type matters when it comes to GVHD? Now that my blood type has changed will I have fewer GVHD issues? It sounds reasonable but I’m not sure. I will have to look into it sometime.
What do you think does it affect GVHD?
If you went through the stem cell transplant and your DNA/blood type changed drop me a comment below. I would love to hear your story. xxx to all
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