General Hospital Star John J. York Begins Stem Cell Transplant

One day after Jon Lindstrom took to social media asking fans to rally around ailing co-star John J. York, news comes that the General Hospital actor has begun the process of a potentially lifesaving blood stem cell transplant.

John J. York Gets Candid About His Treatment

York previously revealed that he was diagnosed with both myelodysplastic syndromes and multiple smoldering myeloma (two blood and bone marrow disorders), the actor opened up to People magazine about the “long road ahead” and emphasized that the next 100 days would be crucial.

“The first week is an 8-day process of heavy-duty chemo, where I’ll probably lose my hair, and that’s OK,” the Mac Scorpio actor told the publication. “And, you know, there’s just all kinds of issues. I could, I could pass away. I mean, maybe not from the chemo, but when the transplant starts. So after the eight days of these different chemo treatments that they’re doing, they’re basically wiping my body of what I’ve been living with in terms of my blood and DNA and all this stuff for my entire life. They’re wiping that clean, and then they’re gonna put new stuff in me from the donor. And that’s going to be the new me.”

After receiving the blood stem cell transplant, it becomes a game of wait and see coupled with a grueling schedule which will see the actor return to the hospital every day for 100 days for testing.

York detailed that, “If tests come back after, let’s say after 30 days or 35, 40 days, tests are looking really good, that would be wonderful. Then they may say, ‘You don’t have to come in tomorrow, come in the next day. And then we’ll test after that.’ That goes on for 100 days, and I would say the first probably 20 days [after the transplant] are the crucial days. From the first day of the transplant, I’m guessing 14 to 20 days out, they’ll be able to tell with testing daily how I’m receiving and accepting the stem cells.”

Those tense 100 days will then be followed by an indeterminable length of time (possibly up to two years), during which York will follow a strict drug regimen and submit to further testing, including periodic (and painful) bone marrow aspiration and biopsies.

And though York admitted the procedures weren’t one of his favorite things in the world, he said, “There’s nothing I can do about it. I said it before: one day at a time.”

Soap Hub sends John J. York our best wishes during his cancer treatment.