These rules and recommendations have been drawn up to guide you and your family.
- Before taking any medication, follow your doctor's prescriptions.
- Please keep your regular follow-up appointments. Attend these appointments fasting, without having taken your medication.
- Chemotherapy will reduce the optimal functioning of your immune system for about a year. It is therefore important, throughout the year, to take care of your personal hygiene and diet, to wear a protective mask, and to limit the number of visitors, handshakes and sexual intercourse.
Daily-life instructions:
- After the transplant, your home must be particularly clean. The patient should stay in a separate room, and all dust-collecting items, such as carpets and curtains, should be removed from it. Only clean and air the patient's room when the patient is not in it. If there is no central heating in the room or home, make sure not to light or clean the stove in the patient's presence. Take care to keep a stable temperature in the room.
- The patient's room should be kept away from any interior renovation work or exterior construction.
- Because of the risk of infection, all houseplants and pets, including cats, dogs, fish and birds, must be kept away from the home for one year.
- Also make sure that the rest of the home is clean and tidy.
- Pay attention to hand hygiene and set aside a towel for the patient's exclusive use, which nobody else should use. Wash and iron this towel after each use. Prefer showers to baths. Use only moisturising soaps.
- For hand and face hygiene, use paper towels.
- Do not receive visitors during the first 100 days. Afterwards, reduce the number of visitors as much as possible. Avoid any close contact, including kissing, hugging and handshakes.
- Change the patient's bedding at least twice a week and air the mattress frequently.
- Do not use wool or feather pillows.
- Make sure all new clothes are washed before being worn.
- Make sure the patient wears two masks when travelling or going out.
- For one year, the patient must not bathe (in the sea or in a pool) or use a sauna.
- For one year, protect yourself from direct sunlight. Any walk outdoors should take place at dusk.
- For one year, women should not wax or epilate. If the doctor allows it, depilatory creams may be used.
- When cutting the patient's hair, pay great attention to hygiene.
- Brush your teeth 3 times a day with a soft brush. Try to avoid any bleeding of the gums.
- For one year, do not use deodorant, perfume, cosmetics or hair dye.
- Do not consume tobacco or alcohol. Avoid smoky, dusty and dirty environments.
- Do not come into contact with people who have a cold, flu or other infections.
- If you notice an abnormality such as bleeding, bruising or swelling on any part of the body, consult a doctor immediately.
- Dress according to the weather. Avoid falling ill.
- After the transplant, women's menstrual cycles may become irregular. Please consult a doctor in the gynaecology department.
- During the first three months after the transplant, the treatment will cause a feeling of thirst, hunger and a loss of taste. This is why patients must drink three litres of water a day. Drinking less can upset the electrolyte balance and increase the risk of becoming ill. Other fluids can also help. For example, have milk, drinking yoghurt or ayran, tea, fruit juice or soup. To stimulate appetite, chew sugar-free chewing gum; to regain your sense of taste, suck a sweet. If you feel nauseous, drink homemade lemonade 30 minutes before the meal.
- Do not drink spring water of unknown origin. Drink only bottled water.
- Any milk bought outside the home must be boiled for at least 15 minutes.
- Eat pasteurised or homemade yoghurt.
- Wash all fruit and vegetables, leave them to soak for 30 minutes in water with vinegar, then peel them before eating.
- Eat fruit
Zafer Gülbaş
MD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Haematology
Oncology – Haematology-Oncology
Zafer Gülbaş
MD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Haematology
Oncology – Haematology-Oncology
Education and career
• Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine
• Anadolu University Faculty of Medicine
• Atatürk Chest Diseases and Thoracic Surgery Centre
• Hadassah Medical Center, Israel
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA
• M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, USA
• Princess Margaret Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada
Specialties and medical areas of interest
• Treatment of haematological tumours
• Stem cell transplantation
• Platelet function
• Flow cytometry
• Blood banks