Transplant impacts the patient’s entire family in many ways, linking logistics, finances, emotions, and beliefs. Every family finds its own ways to handle these needs. Don’t be embarrassed or feel guilty about feeling overwhelmed or worried about how you will possibly be able to take care of everything at a time that you are naturally so worried about the survival of your sick child. Given the circumstances, this kind of reaction is normal. But don’t feel that you must “go it alone” in trying to find solutions, even if you have never before asked for help with a family problem or pride yourself on being self-reliant.

Since every child undergoing a BMT needs a full time caregiver around the clock, this means that at least one adult in the family will have to be off work for many weeks and/or months, and possibly for a number of years. For many families, this means a significant loss of income at a time when their expenses greatly increase. We examine here the specific needs of BMT patient families in the areas of parental employment and living expenses, as well as the costs of the medical side of transplant, and offer some suggestions on how to meet these needs.

After the initial shock of learning that your child needs a BMT, it is important to start to plan for it as much as possible. In reality, not all families will have time to plan, because some diseases, like acute leukemia, have been found to respond best to transplant soon after diagnosis. And as medical care costs have increased tremendously, it is the rare family today that has extra funds available to cover the costs of a catastrophic illness.

We will start by looking at the typical types of expenses involved in a BMT, followed by suggestions of possible means and/or resources to help cover them. A more in-depth discussion of coverage of the medical expenses is contained in the sections on Insurance and Uninsured Children.

Despite the great medical advances that now mean that BMT cures many patients, the difficult reality is that not all children survive transplant. The diseases that lead to the need for BMT are life-threatening, and the procedure itself still comes with risk of serious complications and potentially-dangerous side effects. Patients undergoing BMTs with cells from unrelated donors face extra challenges. While we hope that no family will have to have confront this issue, it would not be realistic to discuss BMT without acknowledging this reality.