Diagnosis: Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). A Journey

Yesterday, George had his seventh bone marrow biopsy. He has to be clear of AML in order to have his transplant next month. He’s getting pretty good at this! So, we should get the preliminary results by the end of the week. The molecular data will take about a month. He had it done under sedation (yay!) in the interventional radiology department.

It didn’t take too long and I had to laugh when George was wheeled in and the nurse asked him if he wanted a snack and a drink (he couldn’t eat anything before the procedure) and his response was “That’s a good question” and then promptly fell asleep. That versed and fentanyl does a number on ya! Both those drugs together do a better job of sedation than each one alone. When he was finally roused, he was so disappointed that he missed the feeling you get when you receive the sedatives! He didn’t remember anything past the doctor asking him what kind of music he wanted to listen to during the procedure!

Not long after we got home, George went back into his office to work for a bit. Then he received a phone call from Rachel Golding, the bone marrow transplant coordinator. She wanted to update him on what is going on and to give us an idea of when they were shooting for doing the transplant (late July). She also said they were trying to contact our Humana /Tricare insurance liaison, Tina, but kept getting her out of office message. Tina usually helps get everything approved and greases the skids for us. We decided we would try to call her the next morning. Welp – Tina called George later in the afternoon! She said she had taken George’s case to the medical director and got George approved for his second transplant! This was really surprising because last time, he had to first get cleared by passing his chest x-ray, pulmonary lung function test and EKG, at which point he would officially be a candidate for transplant. Apparently, he didn’t have to do that this time! So, that was good news.

George has an appointment with his oncologist on July 5th as well as a chest x-ray. On the 6th, he will meet with his pulmonologist and have his pulmonary function test. Then we will just wait for the donor to be scheduled to donate their marrow and for an admission date for the hospital.

First, we have to get a clean bone marrow biopsy report. Again, it’s ok if he has signs of MDS, because he can still have a transplant with MDS.

This is just a quick update…we will have more information next week after results come in and we meet with the doctors.