Hollings Horizons Winter 2025 - Flipbook - Page 16
Celebrating
Life After Transplant
T
he Blood and
Marrow Transplant
and Cellular
Therapy team at MUSC
Hollings Cancer Center
celebrated a big milestone
this summer — more than
3,000 patients treated
since the program offered
the first transplants in
South Carolina in 1987.
“It was honestly really
scary at first because
they say it's a rare
intestinal cancer that
I have,” Golden said.
“But they put it all in
perspective for us like,
‘Hey, this is what the
plan is. You’re young.
You’re otherwise very
healthy; we see you
doing well.’”
Blood and bone marrow
Kennedy Golden
“They told us the whole
transplants — sometimes
overarching plan to
called stem cell transplants
get to this bone marrow transplant, and they called it the
— can be lifesaving for people with different types of blood
sledgehammer — like chemo is this little nail, and the
cancers. They’re also used for diseases like sickle cell anemia
sledgehammer is the bone marrow transplant that’s going to
and aplastic anemia, known as bone marrow failure.
knock it out,” she said.
For patient Kennedy Golden, 23, the transplant is a new start.
Golden had six rounds of chemotherapy in Columbia as her
After “a year of tummy trouble,” Golden was admitted to a hospital
treatment plan progressed toward the stem cell transplant.
in Columbia when, at the end of a workday, she was overcome
with pain. There, she learned her bowel had ruptured.
“I felt so much better. Even being in the throes of
chemotherapy was better than the tummy trouble I’d been
They performed a biopsy and a week later, Golden learned she
dealing with,” she said. “It's very refreshing to feel normal,
had intestinal T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of non-Hodgkin
even with things out of whack.”
lymphoma, which prompted her oncologist in Columbia to
refer her to Hollings.
She then began to prepare for the stem cell transplant.
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HOLLINGS HORIZONS Winter 2025
