By Nicole Weisensee Egan

08/09/2013 at 04:15 PM EDT

On Wednesday, Madoff received a donor lymphocyte infusion in hopes of salvaging the stem cell transplant he received on May 29th, after several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation to treat his mantle cell lymphoma.

"Things were humming along nicely, but then one of the components of the transplant started failing," he says. "We kind of waited it out a couple of weeks to see if it would fail entirely."

His situation did not improve, which led to the donor infusion on Tuesday.

"This will hopefully prevent it from failing," he says. "If they didn't do this, it would certainly have failed."

With doctors saying there is only a 50/50 chance that the infusion will work, Madoff insists he is trying to stay positive.

"It's hard. It's been a long road. I've been receiving treatment since January, and it's a lot," he says, ticking off, "Six rounds of chemotherapy, then radiation, then more chemo before the transplant, then the transplant itself."

Madoff, whose stage one cancer (confined to a single lymph node), was originally diagnosed in 2003, now has stage four cancer, which has spread throughout his body. He revealed his recurrence of the disease to PEOPLE earlier this year, after his condition had been diagnosed during his annual checkup last October.

He says that after the PEOPLE story ran he received hundreds of emails and letters of support from total strangers.

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Andrew Madoff Battling Stage-Four Cancer, Receives Donor Infusion After Stem Cell Transplant