From Media Reports
NEW YORK – ABC’s “Good Morning America” co-host Robin Roberts is already wishing to leave the hospital following her bone marrow transplant.
Her oncologist, Dr. Gail Ropoz, said Roberts had emailed that note a day after the procedure. ABC showed a brief video clip of Roberts in her hospital bed receiving bone marrow from her donor sister to treat MDS, a blood and bone marrow disease.
The transplant was a five-minute procedure in which the donor cells from Robin’s sister, Sally-Ann, were injected into Robin’s system through a syringe.
“Nobody can believe it,” Dr. Gail Roboz, the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center oncologist who is treating Robin, said today on “GMA” of the short procedure.
“People have in their mind all kinds of images of what can happen in a transplant but it’s still an incredibly powerful moment,” she said. “Inside of that syringe are millions and millions of stem cells that are now circulating around and trying to find their home and start growing which is what we’re going to be looking for over the next couple of weeks.”
During the procedure, Roberts was surrounded by family and friends including ABC anchor Diane Sawyer.
Ropoz said Roberts is being monitored to guard against infection and to see that her white blood cell count is increasing. She said Roberts can expect some good and bad days in her recovery.
Prior to her surgery, Roberts thanked her viewers for their support and sent a video message taped from her New York hospital bed. It aired the day she was to have surgery.
Declaring that “thoughts are so powerful,” Roberts told her audience: “I feel the love and I thank you for it.”
Roberts’ transplant came after 11 days spent in the hospital and eight days of chemotherapy to prepare her for the procedure. The donor is her older sister, Sally-Ann Roberts.
In June, the 51-year-old Pass Christian, Miss. Native disclosed that she has MDS, a rare blood disorder.
Her last day on “GMA” was Aug. 30 before she began extended medical leave from the ABC morning show.
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