Interview with Margo Chase-Dobrian

Today, for a class assignment, I had the pleasure to interview a nurse in the Bone Marrow Treatment Unit at Shands hospital. Her name is Margo Chase-Dobrian and she provided me with a lot of useful information about Bone-Marrow and the amazing procedures that the physicians in this department perform. One of the interesting things I learned was that Bone-Marrow is a procedure not only for Leukemia patients but also for patients sufferering from Lymphoma, Myeloma, Immune-deficiency and other blood diseases. The age of patients who undergo the surgery range from, in one case, a one-day old child all the way through to the elderely. I also learned of a recent medical advancement that allows doctors to preserve the blood from the umbilical cord from a newly born baby, and use it to perform the bone-marrow transplant. Advancements similar to these have made the procedure much more succesful in many ways, and although patients must still undergoe intensive chemo-therapy after their transplant procedure, doctors are able to utilize a variety of procedures to ensure a safe and effective transplant.